Scott and I were both asleep when Julie arrived at the apartment after her workshift got out. I woke up to hear Scott in the bathroom getting ready for the trip. It was 2am. I got up and showered. We were out of the apartment by 2:30, bound for Cody, Wyoming. Julie and I surfed around for a while looking for hotel deals. I didn't know what to expect out there, but hearing that those bikers would be in the area once again, I decided it would be wise to be cautious and book something (normally, I'd wing it and get a room when we were tired). It took us about 8 hours to get to Cody from Denver. We arrived too early for the hotel to take us, so we killed time by having some lunch.

We then went through downtown Cody, another cowboy town like Deadwood. They had all sorts of trinket shops for cowboy/Native American gear, so with my bedroom in mind, I was on a mission to make some deals. Man, I ended up with a bag full of stuff that would have costed $400 in Arizona for only $100. I made out like a bandit. (I'll take some pics of the bedroom with my new stuff when I can.)

We got to the hotel, and took a quick nap. I think we were all more than exhausted. Julie had just sat in the car 8 hours after a full shift at work, Scott and I had driven to Colorado Springs not more than a few hours later... We all needed to sleep.

Soon after the nap, we were on the road again to Yellowstone National Park. The park was 50 miles from Cody, Wyoming, and the trip there was BEAUTIFUL. We pulled off when we were surrounded by mountains and saw a rushing river below. Another mile or so up the road, we were surrounded by a gorgeous lake encapsulated by rocky cliff walls. It was so impressive that we had to once again park the car along side of the road and hop the fence to go shoot some more photos. Driving in even further, we encountered huge mountains, some were in that ruddy earth tone of the redrocks, some were dark brown and jagged. The topography varied, but most of the time, we were looking at scenes of rushing streams along huge mountains on either side of the road.

We got to the entrance and started inward. The mission for the day was to see Old Faithful (Scott's pick) and some buffalo not in captivity (my pick). We came in through the East entrance and drove along Lake Yellowstone. The sky was light blue over Yellowstone's deep, brilliant blue water. Truly a sight to behold.

As we hooked around the corner, we parked and explored the first hot spring I had ever seen. It was an open area about the size of a football field, and from a decked-out walkway you could see large pools of red, teal, lime green, white.... all coming from steamy, smelly, bubbling pools of Something. Mostly, it looked like a pond of boiling crusty milk.

The white earth was really just calcified stone or dirt or something, and the smell of course was sulfur, but those colors? Oh man. This photo doesn't do it justice. It was unreal.

We continued on in search of buffalo. It was about 4 or 5pm, and we knew we didn't have much light left. So, we headed over to Old Faithful.

My Dad mentioned being here in '67. Here I was in 2004, and I'm guessing we both experienced almost the same view of the impressive geyser. The mound at Old Faithful vents steam like this all day/night long. You know things are about to happen when you start to see water bubbling and rising about 4 feet high, then settle...then repeat, then settle. And then? BLAM! The geyser shot water out of the hole at about 130 feet for a few minutes. It was pretty neat to see. Everyone (and there were quite a few people) went nuts taking pictures, ooo-ing and ahh-ing, etc.

We hopped in the car, impressed as hell, and started heading for Montana. We were going to take the long way home so that Scott and I could both say we'd seen Montana. As we came around the bend, we found ourselves in marsh land. I took a shot of the yellow-green grass and then asked Julie to get one of me in front of it- mainly to show how diverse the landscape was out here. This was all within a few miles of the geyser, the lake, the bubbling springs, the forest, and now? Marsh. It was awesome.

Another mile down the road, there were people stopped and getting out of their cars. We pulled closer and parked to see what was going on. Out of the marshy area was a strange, gnarly treebranch formation. I didn't make sense of it until the branches started moving and I realized that I was looking at a Mule Elk. The thing was enormous. He and three buddies were chilling out in the grass. It wasn't a buffalo, but I was still pretty impressed to be so close to wildlife of this magnitude. It was an awesome thing to behold.

We drove along and pulled over once again at Mammoth Hot Springs. We didn't exactly see a walkway, so Scott and I jumped a fence and ran down a hill to get to where we wanted to be. The scenery there was something that just won't come off as well here, but I'm going to try...

Picture a gradually-sloping hill. Okay, now make the slope rougher, more like stair-steps. Now, imagine the stairs not brown like dirt or green like grass, but white. Pure calcium white. Now, imagine boiling hot bubbling water rushing off each stairstep, "Slinky'ing" down to the next step, and leaving minature calcium icicles behind. Toss in the multi-colored springs of teal, red, rust, brown, yellow, orange...and what you have is the Mammoth hot springs. (well, something like that).

We could feel the heat coming off the water as you would with a hot tub, and the smell was undenyable, but the view? Oh, this was incredible. The sun was setting in the background, which was beautiful to see (and slightly discolored the photos from their true brilliance). Words can't describe, so you'll have to go to see for yourself on that one.

We had a few more scenic stops on the way out of the North entrance (into Montana) and grabbed some dinner in Livingston, MT. Then, it was a 4.5 hour trip in the dark home to Cody, Wyoming where we had a hotel for the night.

We got home at 1:45am and the three of us almost immediately fell asleep.

The alarm got us all up at 8am for day 2.