YELLLOWSTONE!!!

Posted by Alyssa Howlett , Wednesday, June 30, 2010 11:57 AM

Well, it has been a wild week, let me tell you. I have been back in Shell at base camp for two days now enjoying the luxury of showers, real cooked food, and most importantly- a bed. And yes, that is right, I said these past days at camp have been a high class treat. I say this because for the past 8 days I have leaved out of a van and have been camping, legit camping.

We left for Yellowstone on Monday June 21. We were all super excited. And the trip started out well. WE fit all our luggage into the van, we found a dead stiff mouse in our ceiling, and we saw the special Shell Peacocks at the start of our journey. I love out van too, we had a great time. We sang and laughed and slept but overall it was a pro van. IT consisted of Me, Kelli, Kate, Lisa, Jordan (the girls in my cabin) and then Kurt, Sebastain, Rob, and Meeteetsee (aka Michael) with special appearances by some teachers like Josh and Karen.

On the way to Yellowstone, we stopped at The Buffalo Bill Dam. This was the largest dam before the Hoover dam was built. It was really neat. We stood right on top of it and looked down. Crazy! While we were here we got a “road side geology mini lecture about the Absarahaka Mountain Range by Cody. It was really different and cool to see “hard rocks” since we have been looking at “soft rocks” for the past 5 weeks. (hard rocks=metamorphic/igneous and soft rocks= sedimentary) It was also very interesting since we had just learned about how the whole Yellowstone/Grand Tetons area formed, and woah baby it was rock party of bending and smashing and lifting! So cool to learn and then see it all!

As we continued to drive we stopped and looked at more volcanic rocks. Then we drove into Yellowstone, listening to the one and only, PARTY IN THE USA! It was a perfect summer America moment! Ha!! Our windows were down and it was so so so so so gorgeous!!! The views were spectacular and we even saw a moose, (really quick, but for that one second, it was there!) and we saw a buffalo! (we made a pact that in our car, you had to yell if you saw animals, and you could cry wolf, because I was the driver and I wanted to see, I said if they joked I would kick them out of my van, ha! We made it to the camp ground, but since it was opening day, there was a HUGE LINE! So we vetoed that idea of waiting and went to see the West Thumb Geyser Basin. It was really neat, they were all by the lake and so so clear! They smelled a little, but we got used tp the lovely sufer smell real quick in Yellowstone. We got back to the campsite and got to our camp. It was a mad dash to find a suitable tent set up site. ( I have learned so much about all this, I basically am a tent set-up/take down pro fyi) We got all out tents set up and it looked like a mini village! We even called it down town, mid town, and up town. I had 3 other girls in my tent, Kelli, Jordan, and Melanie. But to make things more fun, guess what? We were told that there was a bear in the area… WOOO my favorite. I love the fear of bears at night, plus, wolves, and other creatures while I sleep, great. So I got a tad freaked, plus the boys like to be cool and tell us more things to scare us.. nice. This means nothing could be left out. Everything was in the vans, clothes food, bathroom things only me and my sleeping bag were in the tent. But we set up had chili and then had a fire. I was scared, but I did it. I made it through the night! WOO! Check, night one, done.

I will say the bathrooms at Yellowstone to camp, just perfect! 3 stalls, running water (it was ice, but hey.. water is water, and nice to have around). We had breakfast and then headed to sight see! We stopped at Old faithful first! I was so excited! YAY for touristy things! We walked around and looked at all the hot springs and geysers and then at 10:10 am OLD FAITHFUL erupted! WOOOOOOOO! It was pretty cool. I wanted a Geology badge to show the rangers, so that we could get closer, but they don’t make those, darn. After that a group of us went through the shops! So sweet! And then had a hot lunch! (we have been having cold meat sandwiched everyday… a grilled BBQ chicken sandwich was AMAZING!) Then we headed to the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring. It is the largest Hot Spring in the world! And oh so pretty! We were cool though, everyone else walked on the board walk like, “smuchs” our teacher said. We were cool and hiked to the top of a ridge and looked out over the spring to see it in a birds eye view instead of right up close. I also and now an acclaimed Christmas Card photographer! I took 2 families pictures by this and I must say, beautiful! For sure the Christmas card! Ha! :) We then traveled some more and saw more hot springs, and basked in the sulfur smell once more! Yum, (not really, I gagged a lot and ran through all the steam, it was gross we all smelled like sulfer and just felt uuck covered in it!) When we got back to the camp site, our tent was flooded…. Super. I just love sleeping in a tent…. So we dried it out and moved it. We had dinner then back at camp, fun foil things with han and potatoes, I rocked it! Everyone had foil blobs, I would like to that the Reynolds wrap ladies for teaching me how to create a good foil cooker! Ha! We then BIG NEWS….. took a shower!!!!! Woooo!!!!! It was great, we had 6 min. but it felt so good! Then we played card games in my tent and then it started to rain. Lovely, and we had to pre our tent to keep water out. So in the pouring rain, we tied off ends and made the fly cover more and not touch the tent. We made it and slept dry.

This day we got up and headed to the Grand Cayon of Yellowstone, extremely pretty! A beautiful waterfall that cut into a canyon. On our way there we celebrated Jordans b-day in the van and saw herds and herds of Bison! Two even ran right in front of our vans and along side them! Scary to drive, sweet to take pics! Was also saw a Bull elk, so amazing! The antlers! WOAH! Then we headed to Tower Water Fall and on our way there (throught eh mountain windy scary roads) we saw a bear!!!!!!! A little black bear, and there was bear jam, it was cool! A ranger and a ton of people looking at this little bear! We then saw columnar jointing of basalts, very cool. We stopped on the side of the road and took pics! It is funny though, in Yellowstone, if any, and I mean any cars are pulled over everyone slows down to see what people are looking at, it is really funny! So later we drove to Mammoth Hot springs. Here was were able to walk around and see more hot springs. I was kinda hot springed out, but still they were really cool looking. It was really hot this day too, so hot + hot springs + sulfer = not so comfortable. After this we drove to specimen ridge. Here people could optionally hike really high and far up to see three pieces of petrafide wood. I said, no thanks and hung out by the van for three hours. Lisa and I layed out and chilled, it was nice. But since all four of our vans were pulled over, people stopped and looked and slowed down hahahaha it was funny. We were just sitting there, looking at nothing. We then went out to eat at a cafeteria place, it was ok, but nice that we didn’t have to cook it. We then RoCkEd OuT in the vans back to our camp site. We all listened to the same radio station and sand storm and shout were played hahah it was hilarious! We were all going crazy, all three vans! So much fun! Our last night at camp we had a fire and enjoyed Yellowstone. We headed to the Grand Tetons next!