Yellowstone is for lovers

This week our humble family started a new tradition: camp out in a beautiful place while demonstrating a complete lack of camping knowledge, getting on each other's nerves, making bad jokes, then getting back tired and ready to face the metropolis again. We started with Yellowstone Nat'l Park. In case you, like me, didn't know, the park is a 2 million acre rectangle mostly in Wyoming, but also touching Montana and Idaho. If case you, like me, still don't know where that is, shame shame (cheat code: from CA, go right into Nevada, up into Idaho, then right again into Wyoming). It was my first time in all those states, and my favorite by far is Idaho. Lots of quaint farmland, punctuated by snappy roadsigns like "Idaho is too great to litter." Tell'em Idaho! I was less impressed by Nevada's huge deserts, but found out that it's got a bigger population (2.5mil vs 1.5mil), as well as a slyly-named Deeth Starr Valley, which is certainly something.


Anticipation. Yellowstone is laced with geysers and hot springs, and Old Faithful is the most predictable, going off every 30-90 minutes. It draws a big crowd.


There's gotta be a great pick-up line here. Hey baby, I go off consistently every 30-90 minutes, hundreds of feet in the air. Lemme buy you a drink.


Chinese Spring. As you can see, it is not sexy.


There are a lot of geysers and hot springs near Yellowstone. We didn't get to go to this one, but I'm pretty sure I know what it looks like already.


The wild, dangerous fauna of Yellowstone Park. Must've caught em on an off day.


Maybe I'm just a horrible wildlife photographer.


Snotty herds of Buffalo. An ongoing traffic problem in Yellowstone.


Valley. We came across this on the third day, after a hard 5-mile hike. I have a confession to make here: I didn't hike my parents up here to enjoy the view. We don't have electric lights, and we're too cheap to build big campfires, so the first few nights after dark we went into the tent and played Chinese Big 2. This would be fine, except my mom is scary good at the game, and a guy can only lose to his mother in cards so many times. With the daunting prospect of losing again that night daunting my already-daunted mind, I chose the hike to tire my parents out, in hopes they would sleep early. It worked!


Hot Spring. I woke up the next day smelling something horrible. Unable to figure out what it was, I made the logical assumption that it was me. Confidence: low. My mom tells me it's not me, it's the sulfur. Confidence: sexy time! Thanks mom! The yellow around this spring is all sulfur. The heat of the spring melts it underground, then carries it up to the surface where it crystallizes. Smart, huh?


Puddle. We got rained on two out of the four nights we camped out, and being giant wusses, we went to bed at 9 on both nights. The rain made a nice plitter platter on the tent, and I stayed awake listening and thinking about relationships, God, UCLA football, and possible photo essay ideas. Thanks Daily Bruin (by the way, I came up with one: clowns. The life of clowns. The life of a UCLA clown. Don't cop it, I might use it). I woke up too early that morning and couldn't go back to sleep, no thanks to the forest critters that seem to have happy hour at around 6am. Pretended to be asleep when my parents woke up, but they saw through it and made me do stuff.


bitch


Our fabulous tent, with the ghetto-fab tarp we rigged over it. Do I look like a girl in this picture? ...Is my mom manlier than I am? ...I guess that wouldn't be so bad.


Family shot. The best one I have, out of a very small pool, from this week. Familys aren't perfect, and mine isn't close, but on the way back we stayed at a motel and watched Die Hard 2: With a Vengeance, and man... do we all enjoy a bad white cop with an edgy black dude in a movie together. The week had ups and downs that I don't remember right now, but I'll leave you with what it left me.

Samuel L Jackson: now, where you goin'?
Kid 1: school
Samuel L Jackson: why?
Kid 2: to get educated
Samuel L Jackson: WHY?
Kid 1: so we can go to college
Samuel L Jackson: and why is that important?
Kid 1: to get es-pect.
Samuel L Jackson: RE-spect. Now, who's the bad guys?
Kid 1: guys who sell drugs.
Kid 2: guys who have guns.
Samuel L Jackson: and whos the good guys?
Kid 1: we're the good guys.
Samuel L Jackson: who's gonna help you?
Kid 2: nobody.
Samuel L Jackson: *SO who's gonna help you*?
Kid 1: we're gonna help ourselves.
Samuel L Jackson: And who do we not want to help us?
Kid 1, Kid 2: white people.
Samuel L Jackson: that's right. Now get on outta here. Go to school.