Drea from the future here! We should be qualifying today as our last day of the national parks trip, but it won't be, and I'll talk about thaton the actual day. I feel a little ill today, not sure why, my stomach is greasy and I have a vague nausea settled in the back of my throat that isn't upfront and persistent, but there JUUUUUUUUUST enough to be annoying. I am writing this while Derek packs everything so we can leave our hotel in Estes and head for Kansas City. This is how tired I've been during this trip...trying to blog every day has been an unrelenting fatigue demon. Which is 100% the mark of an excellent trip.
This is our last day in Yellowstone, and it meant exploring the bottom loop of the Grand Loop. We hadn't really specified where we wanted to do sunrise photos on the grand loop...I have vaguely gestured toward sunrise over Yellowstone lake, which is absolutely beautiful, but Derek...and I, honestly...weren't really enamored with that location. So we just kinda bickered about where to go and then headed over to Old Faithful. I had to go to the inn, anyway, so might as well start there.
It is SO active over there. Not with people, with hydrothermal action. Looking at like, 80% of the park, I forget we were on a super busy volcanic minefield just bursting...literally...with energy. We drove by a field of vents...fumeroles?...and wondered, "is this place for us for sunrise?"
Nope.
While the smoke in the foreground was interesting, there was no real discernment for a cool background, so we pressed on toward the Old Faithful Inn. Not with necessary intention, just because like...there's only one way to go on Grand Loop road away from our hotel.
When we got to the inn, I had to take pictures of all of it because I was worried my dad wouldn't believe that I had gone to the inn if I didn't have proof. My dad seemed to really love the Old Faithful Inn, and being frank, I could have left the entire wing of the Grand Loop that has Old Faithful...and its inn...behind and not missed it. But here I am!
Just for you, daddy!
We didn't see much in the way of scenery (all offense, Old Faithful. Have you see the rest of the park? Get it together), but we DID see a few bison posted up in front of a hill of fumeroles, so that's where we made our sunrise location.
Wow, she said.
He said wow, too, but I think he meant it more.
We had about fifteen minutes to sunrise, and I got really bored with where we were about five minutes prior. I know I sound like an unappreciative monster, and I suppose that's fine by me, but like...some things are just not my jam. I like dramatic landscapes, and while this landscape IS dramatic, the drama for me personally is in understanding what's going on there. Just looking at it doesn't look dramatic to me, it looks humid. Derek was having the grandest of times, and he is tons and tons more patient about wildlife photography and landscape photography than I am, so I packed up my shit and wandered over to Old Faithful itself.
So old. So faithful.
It didn't seem quite primed to go off, though what do I know? I've never seen it, so I wouldn't really know what an indicator of it being ready is. I walked over to the inn to check out my dad's seeming favorite feature of it, the stone chimney.
What a place!
This door is confusing to open inside, I needed to wait for someone to open it for me. I'm not proud.
See, daddy? I really went inside and looked around because you said I should.
....somehow I don't think that's been updated this morning.
I walked through their gift shops, which open WAY earlier than any other gift shop in the park. I assume it's because this is the most popular place to stay, so they have to make that sweet sweet visitor cash for as many hours as possible. They did have a really fantastic spot full of King Kuka's art, and I ALMOST bought one of his embossed lithographs, but it felt REALLY slimy buying a Blackfeet piece from Yellowstone and not knowing if his estate got entirely hosed when it sold his prints to everywhere they sold them. I told Derek I would much rather know I'm directly supporting an artist/their tribe instead of a third party. That goes for any artist, but especially minoritized artists. ESPECIALLY when those minoritized artists are fetishized the way that indigenous artists are. There were so many like, icky reproductions of like...blankets (yikes), weapons (yikes again), dream catchers (tired AND yikes), and I did not want to help Yellowstone cash in on that kind of appropriative white nonsense. I did see a lot of artist spotlights that highlighted indigenous artists making the collections being sold, but I also know that a LOT of AI slop shit is marketed this same way online and maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't necessarily believe that Yellowstone the park is engaging in best practices with what they buy up and sell off.
I went back outside, saw that Derek was stll photographing bison...who were MUCH closer to him now, and he had been joined by two park rangers to monitor the safety of the bison and advise guests to leave the area if necessary...and decided I would make an earnest go of trying to get a good wildlife shot.
Hopefully something from this series turns out.
I think Derek was doing his photographs for another 30 or so minutes before the rangers were like, ok, now it's time to go. Derek told me the conversations he'd been having with the park rangers, I believe one of them was either present or a responder when the dude got gored earlier this year, and it was only her second year as a ranger. I bought Vivi a book called Deaths in Yellowstone, and I'm kinda excited to read it after she does.
Derek and I packed it in and drove off to Grand Prismatic Spring, where our hike for the day was located. We were going to do the overlook, of course, and then we were going to do Fairy Falls. I was worried we had showed up a little late for parking, since this is THE big ticket item besides Old Faithful, and when we stopped to photograph the overview of Grand Prismatic field, I was even more worried we were losing our spot.
Time wasters, both of us! There's an overlook to see!!!
We made it to Grand Prismatic, but it really was packed, and we had to park in the overflow lot in one of the very last parking spaces available. What's a longer walk to a trailhead when you're planning a six miler, though? Nothing. So off we headed. Again, just gonna out myself as a geyser hater, it was pretty here, but not my kind of pretty.
So cool.
I know I'm the worst, and likely pretty alone in my ambivalence about what I was looking at. Like, I get the awe inspiring nature of the nature, but I would rather look at something else. However, the overlook for Grand Prismatic really is undersold by any photo I've ever seen of it.
Including my own.
I do hope some of those photos turn out, as well, because tthat really is an incredible sight. It was the most moved and impressed I was this side of the grand loop, full disclosure. It was so packed up there, and so warm, I had to move off of the platform and go sit down in the shade to have my own little private panic attack. Derek came down about ten minutes later, and we hiked off to Fairy Falls. Which was a lovely, very easy hike to the falls, I was thrilled to shout out the occasional, "HEY BEAR!" in earnest, and the falls were so pretty.
I actually started my photos of Fairy Falls way further back on the trail, mostly because I wanted a lot of variety here to ensure that ONE photo turns out. Have I mentioned I am a pretty shit landscape photographer? I've popped off a few good ones, but it's more about luck than skill. Landscapes just aren't want I'm interestedin photographing, so my patience for making sure I get the shot is extremely thing. If I get it, I get it, if I don't, I don't, and I'm not terribly pressed about it either way. I do my best, but it isn't like when I'm working where I can see the images and I can see what I'm doing and I know the vision. I'm just kinda flying by vague direction with landscapes. So if one of these comes out, yay! If they don't, oh well.
It was a busier trail than I had been expecting, though it was far from a rush of people. I think we saw ten people, maybe twelve? But I had been expecting to top out at 6. We hung out here for maybe 30-ish minutes, I tried a bunch of vantages, and I have yet to look and see if anything I did was successful.
Next we headed over to the artist paint pots, which Derek had been the most excited about. The parking lot was PACKED, the boardwalks were packed, and I didn't see a pathway for us to visit those paint pots. Derek thinks I did that to him on purpose, which is a rancid thing to think, it was just genuinely full to the brim, it had a LOT FULL sign, and I knew there were more paint pots up the way to go see that weren't going to be as busy. Derek said he knew I didn't care about those paint pots so I didn't make them important, but that's super far from the truth. I DID make those important because they were important to him. It just wasn't in the cards. But the next paint pots were. Derek had a puss on about these paint pots and didn't even seem to really enjoy seeing them (they were pretty subpar paint pots, coming from a hydrothermic activity hater that may seem like a given, but only one of them was farting up stuff and isn't that what this section of the park is all about?). The little park WAS neat, though. It was the best mix of what I like at Yellowstone and what Derek likes.
Mr. Puss.
And really, that was kind of it for the day. We had a long drive back to the hotel to eat our cold slop, Derek was really tired, and who can blame him? We had had a very busy day.
Thank you to my Garmin Overlords for keeping track of me!
I think Derek fell asleep at like, 5:45 for a light nap, and it turned into Derek Went To Sleep For The Night at 5. I stayed up and ate my cold slop and blogged, and I think I went to sleep at about 9. The next day's adventure is leaving for Grand Teton and moving on to the absolute WORST hotel stay of my ever existence.
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