Land of geysers and bison–we saw them all. A white wolf even dashed in front of our car!

Our second morning some departing campers gave us their bearspray and we are now prepared for a faceoff. Aaron has requested that we don’t keep it in the tent because I am easily startled and trigger-happy. We did awake to herd of bison stampeding through our site at Madison campground, but I knew it wasn’t bears.

We stayed two days here. We were lucky to get site for those nights, but the park was full after that. We hiked the Old Faithful loop and saw a few eruptions. As Old Faithful began to sputter, a child yelled encouragingly, “You got this!” The rest of the crowd awwed then tried to crack jokes the remainder of the show, but the material was a bit low-hanging and no one laughed no matter how many times the joke was repeated.

We saw a group of siblings fighting on the boardwalk near another geyser. You are supposed to stay on the boardwalk because the ground is unstable and often boiling-hot. However, the littlest one fell/was pushed backward off the trail. Thankfully the geyser was on the other side so he wasn’t scalded.

The colors of the geysers and hot springs are vividly saturated.

On one hike an elk took a disklike to Aaron. We tried to keep our distance, but it kept charging at Aaron whenever he moved. A nearby ranger came over and scolded the elk and threw pebbles at it while we made our escape. Apparently it had a calf nearby and it sensed Aaron’s profession.

At our nightly campfire the teens from the site next to us came over and talked books with us. It quickly moved from a conversation to a 45-minute blow-by-blow of their favorite sci-fi series. Their parents tried to rescue us, but the summary could not be interrupted. They seemed like sweet kids though.

Next stop: Glacier National Park in Montana.