Ah, the outdoors.  A wonderful place where the air is clean, the sun is bright, and there’s really not that much to do. Somehow we managed to fill our day just looking at stuff. Roach has been bothering us for a day now to go see the mud volcano with him and we obliged. The mud volcano is essentially an area that boasts a large collection of boiling hot springs that emits crazy amounts of sulfur. For humans, sulfur is a grotesque smell that is often associated with rotting eggs or the general decay of life. With this in mind, I now understood why Roach was so eager to sightsee here. You see, very few things kill cockroaches, not even nuclear warfare. So when a Roach smells sulfur, he doesn’t associate it with decay in a negative sense. He associates it with the decay of other living organisms, while his own species remains intact, becoming stronger and more powerful by comparison. So while the five of us walked past the majestic volcano with our shirts covering our noses, Roach would stroll by each spring with a confident gait, pause, flare his nostrils, and dream of his specie’s imminent revolution. Wow Roach, wow.

Anyway, we then made our way to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The walk down to the viewing point was an impressively steep hike, including a succession of approximately 350 steps. Signs were placed preceding the hike, warning away people who had heart conditions, back problems, and so on. We failed to consider the kind of toll such a walk would place on “Brickface Geoffrey”, who had eaten upwards of a dozen pop-tarts over the last couple days. Usually Geoffrey is the epitome of fitness. People tend to cheer and play “Eye of the Tiger” whenever he walks by or bursts up stairs. But those S’mores pop-tarts changed everything. Lucky for Brickface, the park placed benches along the staircase every so often for weary travelers. Usually grandmothers in their 80’s named Fanny or Bridget. But there sat Geoffrey, periodically, until he rejoined us at the top of the trail. The view was worth the effort though.

Check out Roach thinking about roach stuff:

What a long way you have come. To think that only four years ago you were admitted to Vanderbilt University via Affirmative Action in an effort to educate more of America’s insects and now you’re atop one of the greatest canyons in the world. I’m proud, and also done with the Roach jokes for the time being.

After making a quick lunch, we headed to the lower basin where we could feast our eyes on some more Sulfur-emitting geysers. Yay. I’m not saying they aren’t cool. They really are very interesting, colorful ecological systems.

Its just that when you see one big, boiling pool of turbulent water that smells like rotten eggs, you may as well have seen them all. With one exception. Her name is Old Faithful and she is a real pretty geyser. What makes her special isn’t the intense power with which she shoots water out of her hole. And it is intense. It’s the crazy accuracy with which we can predict when the geyser will erupt. On average she goes off every 63 minutes. The exact time interval depends on the duration of the previous eruption, usually lasting between 1 and 5 minutes. But you know what, dependency like this ought to be celebrated in our chaotic world. Cause there are times when I tell my father that my plane is landing at 3:50 and he arrives at the airport at 5 cause he was watching a pre-recorded taping of WWE and needed to finish it first. Or my teacher tells me she will have our papers graded by Friday but instead returns them ten days late cause she has tenure and doesn’t give a fuck. But if a hole in the middle of Wyoming can deliver me a powerful spurt of water at the promised time, over and over again until the supervolcano of Yellowstone explodes, I find that to be a pretty comforting idea worthy of recognition. So we went to see it.

It erupted exactly when we expected:

Very cool, thanks water. With that, we headed back to the campground to set up camp for the night. As we made the 90-minute trek back and watched the mountains roll by, I got the feeling that love was in the air. I couldn’t explain where the sensation came from, but it was validated near the end of our journey home. A cute baby bison crossed the street ahead of us with dozens of bison following behind it or just loitering in the area. We parked the RV for a moment as they crossed the road. Partly out of respect for the beauty of God’s creatures and partly so they wouldn’t form a bison coalition to attack and kill us. As the parade made its way across the street, a Romeo bison set his sights on a Juliet bison that he has been courting for a while. They have been dating for around four years up until this point and they just made the decision to finally move into the same patch of grass together. But Romeo bison didn’t think this large life decision was enough to really show the world and his bison homies just how much he cared about Juliet bison. So as they crossed the street, he nudged her head with his, circled behind her, placed his front legs on her back, aligned himself properly, and stuck it in for all the world to see. It was a quick session but you could feel the love these two dirty animals shared. The bisons clapped and the humans took pictures as their love was consummated.

Yellowstone is weird.

We made it to the campground eventually and microwaved 102 chicken nuggets. Nasty Nas got really drunk on Busch Light and his Bota Box. We all talked into the night, reminiscing about old college memories. Like that one time Zach tried to shave his gooch but cut it open instead. Good times. We dozed off with plans to head to Teton National Park in the morning and to sleep in Idaho. Stay Tuned.

P.S.

The European girls never met up with us. The only explanation is that they figured we were too popular. They probably thought we had too many friends in Yellowstone already and wouldn’t make time for them. We didn’t want to hang out with them anyway…

One other thing, there is a huge part of this road trip that I have failed to cover but deserves recognition. That being the song “Talking Body” by Tove Lo. We play it every second of every day, and if you’re not listening to it right now, you’re making a mistake.