August 5th Day two in Yellowstone National Park

Hmmm, it finally dawns on me. We are camped in the middle of the caldera of a super volcano. Wow, it she erupts while we're here there will be white boxes blown all over the western US along with one very well cared for 93 Airstream Excella with her owners inside.

It's amazing here, you just need to pull off the road anywhere you see steam and shut off your engine. You'll hear the earth speaking; Hissing, burping, roaring, bubbling. I've seen shows on Discovery, History and The Travel Channel about Yellowstone but nothing compares to actually being here. The sights and smells are not like anything I've experienced before.

Today we did West Thumb and Old Faithful. West Thumb is a small geyser basin right on the shores of Yellowstone Lake. Even though it is small it has examples of every kind of thermal feature in the park. It has hot springs, mud pots and fumaroles. Some of the features are actually submerged in the lake. In the morning we took part in a ranger walk through the basin. It focused on Yellowstone's human history and how it became our first National Park. The ranger did a great job. He had us all pretend we were on the expedition that helped Yellowstone become real to the folks in congress. We rode our horses (not really) throughout the region, made camp and discovered the beauty of Yellowstone. It was well worth the 1 1/2 hours of our time. After our ranger walk Leon and I went back through the basin using the feature guide that is available at the start of the trial. We spent another hour or so there just watching and admiring the thermal features. As it was noontime by the time we were finished at West Thumb we took advantage of the basins lovely picnic area for lunch. After lunch we headed down the road to Old Faithful Geyser and the Old Faithful Inn. We arrived about 1:30pm to find it was a madhouse / zoo. It was so crowded with people that it was not pleasant. After circling the parking lots for about 25 minutes we finally found a space near the Old Faithful Inn and we headed in to see if we could catch a historic tour. Bad news was we had missed the last one of the day. Good news was the inn has a decent bar. We enjoyed a couple of cocktails and then headed out to a second floor walkway the bartender told us about to watch Old Faithful erupt. It was fantastic! I cannot describe it's beauty so I will not even try. After Old Faithful had done her stuff we headed back to camp to enjoy dinner. We then retired early as it had once again been a very full day.