OK, yeah well, it's been about what, over two weeks since I last wrote, the last September entry must be racking up a whole bunch of hits from my reader (singular that it). Well, what can I say, life has been busy, not incredible, but busy. I figure I'll do my best to get back into the groove of things if I can.
Well, last Friday I picked up a rental car for the weekend. I drove around and did all the shopping I usually can do without simply because it's usually too far to bother. After some nice teriyaki beef for dinner, I visited *-Mart and the usual collection of box stores. I dropped by Tiffany's place and she and Doug were hanging out, and so we drove out to get some beer. We then spent the rest of the evening in watching South Park episodes, a show I haven't seen in a very long time.
Of course, the point of getting the car was so that we could drive down to Yellowstone National Park. The next morning Tiffany was too hung over to get out of bed, she said she wanted to come but she doesn't seem to know when to stop drinking which is sad.
So, Doug and I left a little after 10 am, and we stopped to get some free college football tickets on the way out. We drove down along the Montanan border for about 2 hours before we reached the western entrance aptly name “West Yellowstone”. I had originally intended to bring our own lunch, but we got off to such a late start that instead we had to eat at an overpriced fast-food restaurant instead. It was about 12:30 pm by the time we got into the park at last after paying the fairly steep entrance fee.
Much of the park was incinerated by the firestorms of 1988 and it'll be many decades before it returns to its previous state. We wound our way slowly towards the geothermal area, which contains most of the “touristy” sights. We saw some elk and then a large heard of bison, which was cool. By an amazing chance we ran into my boss who was there celebrating his 10 year wedding anniversary. We toured some sot springs and then we finally arrived at the Old Faithful area around 2:30 pm. The first thing we did was to check the time of the next expected eruption, which gave us enough time to spend money in the gift shop. We sat round waiting for the eruption and just happy to be out of the car. When Old Faithful did go up, it was rather disappointing. The water jet only went up 20-30 feet, and the eruption was rather short. Undaunted we decided to tour along the boardwalk and check out the neighbouring geothermal area. There were lots of hot springs, thermal pools and bubbling geysers waiting to erupt. The rock formations were rather cool, and there was the persistent stench of sulphur in the air. On our way back we again bumped into my boss and his wife who were coming in the other direction. They commented on the rather poor display put on by Old Faithful, but we arrived back around the time of the next scheduled eruption. It was about 20 minutes late, but was much more impressive than the first. The nearest you can approach is some 150 feet or so, but it was still quite interesting to see.
By now it was about 4:30 pm and so we had to drive quickly to see much more of the park before dark. We headed down and circled up along side the lake. I handed the driving over to Doug not long after we crisscrossed the continental divide, as I was really tired. He drove us up around the long looping road and then North out of the park. The sun was just about down and the night was cold as we left through Gardiner on the park's northern edge. We continued driving north and then turned east for home. We got home about 9:30 pm and we were both pretty tired. I said hello to Tiffany before I went home for a shower, by the time I got back Doug had recovered enough to want to get out of his room. We ended up taking some beers and going and hanging out with a friend of his from home, Katie. She was cool, and had us playing this family game called “Wash Out”, which involves throwing large washers into holes in the ground and scoring points thereby. When it got colder we went inside where we talked and Tiffany fell asleep on the kitchen floor. About 2 pm we dragged her butt out to the car and I drove her and Doug home. Naturally she was hung over the next day, who would have guessed?
I was determined to get the most out of the rental car, and so I picked the biggest mountain in the nearby mountain range to climb. Basically, it is a 2000-foot climb over about 3 miles. It's difficult but popular, and I got out there a little after 2 pm. Naturally I couldn't convince anyone to come with me, and although I would have preferred company I'm getting used to being my own. The hike was very hard, and reinforces my belief that climbing on a machine in a gym and then in the real world have nothing in common at all. The whole mountain was made out of frail gravely rock which was very treacherous underfoot. I did make it to the top in about 90 minutes, and then after enjoying the view and taking photos, it took another hour to make it back down. I was done for the day by this point and headed back home for a shower and a nap.
Later on in the evening I dropped by Tiffany's to return some CD's and she was in her room talking to Bonnie, a senior student who is many of her Computer Science classes. We talked for a while and then we went our separate ways.
I returned the car on Monday morning and then got back to the regular working week.