(This buffalo was wandering on the side of the road where I was able to get a close, but not too close, encounter and picture of him!)
On our way back from Montana, we drove through the United States first national park: Yellowstone. That was an amazing experience, full of things I had never seen before! Like buffalo…I had never seen one before this trip–sans the western paintings of the great plains with thousands of buffalo dotted across it (I swear the same picture was used in every single school social studies and American history books!). There were also hot mud springs, crazy rock formations, beautiful rivers, and vast plains, all nestled into the giant caldera in which Yellowstone sits.
(The caldera line is in light purple, it is a pretty big area)
Caldera is Spanish for a large cooking kettle/pot, but it also is the crater in which a volcano explodes out of. I thought the connection was quite nice and also a little exciting. We drove across this vast caldera which hasn’t exploded in a few thousand years, but if it did, it would dwarf the blast from Mt. Saint Helen’s that happened in the early 1980′s.
(Yellowstone river canyon)
One piece of advice I have if you ever trek into Yellowstone (or any other national park I am guessing) is take a picnic. Make some good sandwiches, a caprice salad with a hunk of fresh ciabatta, fresh fruit, juice, and plenty of water. Just bring what you want to eat. Food in and around the park is scarce and well, not very good. I had a terrible veggie sandwich at a stop in the park– it had been in the refrigerator for who knows how long and had that stale fridge taste, so sad. The beauty of the park made up for it completely though!
(The above two are of the hot mud volcanoes and sulfur springs–not extremely pleasant smelling but super interesting to see)
(This was a little town right before you enter the park from the NE entrance–I don’t think much had changed–sans the gas station–since the old west times, there was a super wide dirt road with some ramshackle stores, restaurants, and saloons along either side! Instead of horses tied up to posts, there were cars)
(Jenny Lake, part of Teton National Park which is just south of Yellowstone and a MUST SEE if you are already out there. It was so gorgeous and mountains like I’ve never seen before…)
I had made a bunch of goodies before we left for the drive out including my zucchini bread and a batch of banana bread–we also had a little cooler filled with some salami cold cuts, caprice salad made with heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil and good mozzarella, the kind that comes in the small little balls, and some sandwiches made with cheddar cheese, heirloom tomato, Dijon mustard, vegenaise, and crunchy lettuce (Andrew had some of the salami on his), there were also two really ripe nectarines–one of my favorite summer fruits. If only we had had such a feast on the way through the park! But, you live and you learn and now we all know to bring a picnic if going to a national park!
Cheers!
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