Bill-on-the-Hill

All good things must end, including this trip. After a fairly unsatisfactory night in West Yellowstone, we packed up and went back to the Upper Geyser Basin for one last bit of gazing, of which I must make an admission: that great shot of Grand Geyser from my earlier report was actually taken on this day. Poetic license and all that. Still no action from Giant Geyser, so I won't repeat the description of the joys of "the Cage", even though we did spend more time there before heading south. I will, however, make some remarks on geyser-gazer sociology.

The Leader of the Pack (or at least the Herd) in West Thumb Geyser Basin. We didn't want to get too close to this guy, but he didn't seem perturbed by human presence in the least.

Bill-on-the-Hill

Mainly more of the same today, with the main attraction (Giant Geyser) continuing to be coy. There was some fine wildlife watching to go along with the geyser gazing, however, and some excellent advice from the hard-core gazers led to a surprisingly good dinner in a place that I didn't know offered any edible food at all.

Elk wandering along the main trail through the Upper Geyser Basin. These guys (mainly gals, actually) aren't exactly the wildest of beasts; in the original photo, a tagging collar can be seen clearly on one of them. But there is no such thing as a "tame" elk, and I wouldn't really have wanted to be as close to them as the person in the photo, telephoto compression or no telephoto compression.

Bill-on-the-Hill

Labor Day, and the start of some serious geyser gazing. We saw a number of things we had never seen before, and had some close-up wildlife encounters. However, the thing that will stick in our minds from this day, entirely consistent with our experience on the Italian volcanoes, was the one we did not see -- just barely.

Bison in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park, with the Yellowstone Inn in the background.

Bill-on-the-Hill

I've long counted it a privilege to live in North Central New Mexico, about 20 miles as the crow flies from Santa Fe. That's about the perfect distance: far enough that we put our kids through the vastly superior public schools of Los Alamos rather than the disgraceful mess that is the Santa Fe school system, yet close enough to enjoy the city's fine dining, tremendous arts and music scenes, and generally delightful, artistic wackiness. Particularly the wackiness. For example: