Today should be fun. We pack up all our belongings, checking twice. Cornelia moves around the room and hotel saying goodbye to all its parts. There was something special about this place for her.
The road trip to Yellowstone is easy. As week drive I feel waves of sadness move through my body but don’t know their origin. I breathe with and allow them.
We pull up into Gardiner, several hours into our trip, to find a cute little town bustling with people, not unlike Estes back home. I see the Yellowstone sign, but it is too busy to park – a theme I will come to know.
I knew we’d end up being in Yellowstone on a Sunday. I knew it’d be busy. But my goodness. The lines of cars are long, and at most interesting stopping points, every possible parking option is taken and there is a line of cars waiting, circling like vultures.
On a whim, we stop by a lake where we see no one but us, and step out to enjoy the beauty. There are forest fires nearby, so the mountains are hazy and the air thick with smoke.
We drive slow by geysers, see one little waterfall briefly. We come upon one geyser, of which I do not know the name, and there is parking! We pull in and go feel the warmth of steam. Cornelia thinks it’s the strangest thing. I do, too.
As we drive I can’t help but feel like the scenery is very similar to our mountains back home, just with geysers and a few more waterfalls.
We pop into a parking lot for Gibbons Waterfalls and are able to quickly find a spot. We weave through the people to listen to the crashing water and take a few selfies, all with other people poking parts of their bodies in them. Edit that later.
She climbs a rock in her new flip flops, and a little boy comes running and just about pushes her the 5 feet down face first into the pavement, apparently practicing parkour, but not body awareness or safety.
We snap a quick pic, at her request, and I grip her hand hard as we head back to the car, slipping through the hundreds of people filing in and out of the now very full parking lot.
We make our way down to Old Faithful, where hundreds of cars are parked and at least a thousand people are strolling around. It’ll be another hour before it erupts, but we’ll poke around and wait. The smoke is thick in the air. Crowds move around licking ice cream cones, dog fights ensue. We try to pop into the gift store but neither of us likes the feeling of moving through the mass of bodies in the dark and musty halls. I’m not quite to that post-COVID comfort level. So we find a tree branch to sit on outside.
It’s hot. I’m cranky. Cornelia is digging around in the rocks and making piles of sticks, somewhere between painfully adorable and pressing all the boundaries she knows to exist – her own crankiness building. It finally erupts, and it is definitely cool. I take a quick video to send her dad and there are so.many.people.
We narrowly escape a full blown toddler breakdown and hustle back to the car to wait in a long line of cars trying to leave. We break out our waters and she pretends to nap but changes her mind, reminding me she is the boss of her body and her body wants to color.
The drive out of Yellowstone is uneventful and again, not unlike a Colorado mountain drive. We take a wrong turn after leaving and before we have service to guide us. The car ride is marked with “are we almost there?” “No.” Every few miles. We both are tired. Once we get food in Idaho Falls and settle into our hotel, the mood improves.
We agree to try to be fresh in our attitudes and head down to the pool for some fun before bedtime.
It’s been a long day. Yellowstone deserves another glance on perhaps a weekday with hopefully fewer folx and maybe once we heal from these fires. Onto our next leg.
daniellerene 