Pedro and I did make our way to Lakeside Lodge eventually, registered, got to our room and unpacked. The room was nice, albeit a little small. It did have two twin beds, which was a good thing because Pedro and I are close friends, but not that close. It also had one of those new fangled capsule-based coffee machines which made quite decent coffee, so I knew we were in good hands. The only downside was that we got a view of the parking lot, but even that was hidden behind some nice firs.
The fun started that evening when we all met in Alan's room. Bel and Ian were there, of course, and soon we were joined by Fernando and his son who came all the way from North Dakota. After the traditional gift exchange (we got coffee and chocolate from Alan and his family, they got all the things that they had mail-ordered and had delivered at my house) we settled on a plan of meeting for breakfast at the Lakeside Cafe every morning around 8 and discussing the day's activities, planning on leaving around 10:30 and getting back around 7 pm for dinner, beer and conversations.
So it was that next morning at 8 am there we were surrounded by piles of eggs, bacon and french toast discussing what the day's activities were going to be. I had two must-see places planned for my visit, Old Faithful and Yellowstone Falls. After some discussion we decided to make this first day geothermal centric, visiting Old Faithful and the Paint Pot in the Lower Geyser Basin, with a stop along the way at the Continental Divide.
The Continental Divide was our first stop. It was just a marker and, truth be told, not particular impressive. As a matter of fact, some of our gang had not even heard of it and did not know what the big deal was. But everybody was nice to me, so we stopped, I set up the camera on the tripod and we took the obligatory picture.
The visit to Old Faithful was a sensory experience: the smell of sulfur, the sound of boiling water and steam and beautiful colors all over the place, from the blue of the sky, to the grey of the mountains, the green of the trees and all the colors in the rainbow in all the different geothermal pools. We learned a lot, like the fact that the colors surrounding the pools are really bacteria mats,that the ground around the geysers is a thin crust and possibly dangerous, and that Alan can outwalk any of us.
What I remember most from that visit, though, is the feeling of how unreal everything seemed. Even though I was seeing boiling water coming from the ground and had learned in school how the Earth's hot core was reponsible for making that happen, it didn't feel natural. Part of me kept thinking that Disney was involved with this somehow, that their imagineers had created this park for us. I imagined miles of pipes and pumps underground making the geysers gush, and men adding sulfur to the water to recreate the appropriate smell.
The Paint Pot was another surreal experience, though this one seemed more Martian than Disney-engineered. Bubbling mud in different colors reminded me of those movies from the 50s and 60s where rockets hanging from visible wires took our intrepid heros to Mars and other planets. It wasn't as exuberant as the geysers, but it was interesting in and of itself.
On the way back to the lodge we stopped to enjoy the Grand Prismatic Spring, a beautiful (and huge) combination of colors. It was also the beginning of the trail to the Mystic falls a thirty-minute hike into actual bear territory. Fernando and his son decided to skip this part and go back to the lodge but Ian, Bel, Pedro, Alan and I decided to go for it. No bears were found, though, and the only nature we had to fight were the mosquitos that were coming out to feast on yummy Brazilian tourists. A snake did cross our path, though, causing some excitement. The falls? Beautiful of course, like everything else in the park.
Back at the lodge that evening I had bison and beer for dinner, and we shared the day's adventures. Among the lessons learned that day: bison meat is stringy, Alan needs to slow down so we can keep up, and we all should remember to apply sun block to our calves.
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