A Night to Remember

Friday marked our 4th day on the road & our 1st day in Yellowstone National Park.  For those who have never been to Yellowstone, the park is huge.  The size of the park coupled with the low speed limits resulted in the better part of our morning being spent driving to our campsite.  Once we arrived we pitched our tent, made some lunch & hopped in the car for a drive to see the sights.

There is one word to describe the geology of Yellowstone: Incredible.  There are so many neat things to see and each one seems better than the next.  As we worked our way south the features only got better.  The further we went the more excited we became about seeing what came next and soon we were hours from our campsite watching Old Faithful rise for the final time before the sun went down.  It was great to be watching the sun setting over the mountain and shortly thereafter seeing the most famous geyser in the world for the very first time.

It was getting late & cold so we decided it was time to head back to our tent to call it a night.  After half an hour of driving we reached a section of road where they were doing construction & as I pulled up I watched them closing the gate for the final time that night.  I was cordially informed that my only option included turning around and taking an alternate route which would require hours of driving.  It was already late and by the time we reached the campground we would only have a couple of hours to sleep before starting a new day.

I was quite frustrated.  We didn’t have a tent or sleeping bags, so we wouldn’t be able to just go to another campsite & I wasn’t willing to drive through the night across the entire park to get back to our campsite.  My girlfriend, probably jokingly, suggested we sleep in the car.  Sleep in the car?  What a great idea!  I returned to the Old Faithful Visitor Center & began looking for an inconspicuous place to park my car.  I didn’t need to be bothered in a couple of hours by a Park Ranger wondering what in the world I was doing sleeping in my car.  I found the nearest parking lot with other cars and parked my car.  We laid our seats back and called it a night, only a couple of hundred of yards from Old Faithful.

By about 4 o’clock it was beginning to get uncomfortably cold so I started my car and cranked up the heat.  I shut my eyes for a while but could not get comfortable.  I didn’t sleep well at all and when the sun finally peaked over the mountains I decided to be on my way.  We stopped to grab a quick bite to eat & set out on our hike around the trails near Old Faithful, which was now quite a convenient destination.

The day started off better than I could have asked for.  As we set off on our hike, Old Faithful rose from its slumber giving us a wonderful show.  There were very few people out on the trail so we had the place to ourselves.  We wandered around admiring all of the different geysers and pools of vividly colored algae blooms.  Finally we arrived at Morning Glory Pool where it was only my girlfriend and I in the early morning sun.  We shared the moment of solitude.  For a moment it felt as though we were the only people in the park.

We started our walk back and as we passed the growing number of tourists I felt thankful for having had spent the night in my car.  If I hadn’t, we would not have been able to have had the park all to ourselves, even if only for a short moment of time.