Day 8: Water Going Up, Water Coming Down

Today is my birthday, and one of the more memorable ones I've ever had. Due to the horrendous weather yesterday evening, not to mention the traffic jam due to the elk sighting, we headed back over to Yellowstone for a bit. We didn't want to leave without seeing Old Faithful erupt. Again, due to just how huge Yellowstone is, there's no such thing as a quick jaunt in. Just getting from our entrance gate to the main road that loops inside the park is 14 miles.

Our first stop was the Grand Prismatic Springs, a large hot spring that creates multiple colors. It's so amazing that you can even see the steam rise in multiple colors.

From there it was off to Old Faithful, our last stop before hitting the road again for Salt Lake City. And we immediately got stuck in a 40-minute traffic jam due to a bear sighting. By the time we got to the bottleneck, though, the bear was already gone. That didn't stop several people from getting out of the cars and wandering the woods as human bear bait.

Luck was with us though, when we got to Old Faithful. When we saw hundreds of people sitting on the benches surrounding the geyser, we figured it must be soon. The next predicted eruption was only twenty minutes away, plus or minus ten minutes. We sat and waited, wondering if it would rumble or something beforehand. The steam would increase, then decrease. Then suddenly, it bubbled up and shot up some 100 feet in the air. Talk about incredible! Truly an awesome sight.

Mission accomplished, we hit the road again. Or at least, we attempted to, as it took us another 45-min or so to get back out of the park.

When we finally got out of the mountains of Montana, we drove through endless miles of Idaho farmland (potatoes?). We noticed that the landscape, save for the farms (and lots of irrigation systems), was much more arid. That makes farms in every state through which we've driven.

The trip back to Yellowstone put us way behind schedule. We had 6:30 dinner reservations at the Garden Restaurant (overlooking Temple Square), at which we'd eaten 13 years ago on our last trip across the country, which wasn't going to happen. We also had lawn tickets that Marsha bought as my birthday present to a show presented by Glenn Beck called "The Man in the Moon" (which we had no idea what it was).

But due to a gigantic thunderstorm, we decided to pass on the show (now we still don't know what it is) and do dinner anyway. The restaurant was just as terrific as we remembered. Afterwards, with a break in the weather, we explored the Temple grounds and peeked into the tabernacle.

The Temple grounds are just beautiful, with numerous fountains and flowers everywhere. We couldn't get enough of the fountains. Despite the rain and the change of plans, it turned out to be an awesome birthday after all.