White Fluffy Fire-Breathing Flying Hippopotamus

Looking at the sky yesterday while driving home from our weekend vacation to Yellowstone, I tried to discern shapes in the clouds. The first one, of course, was a fire-breathing flying hippopotamus. The next one could have been "Opus" from the Far Side comic strip, the third looked like somebody had taken a bicycle pump to the starship Enterprise and made it all bulgy. I decided that perhaps I should pay more attention to the road than the nubulous ever-shifting cottony shapes floating in the sapphire-blue sky. The same sky that just 24 hours earlier was dark grey, pouring rain down on tourists that had just shelled out 20 bucks to see wildlife and geysers. Tourists just like us.

I don't think my youngest two daughters have ever seen Yellowstone on a nice day. Ever.

Yellowstone wasn't all that bad. We did see the aforementioned wildlife. Up Close. Up Really Close.



We were driving past the entrance to the Firehole River, when we noticed a few buffalo trotting down the other side of the road, heading our direction. Of course, this had been stopping up traffic on the opposite side of the road, but our side was nice and clear, until one of the bison decided to trot right out into the road, and then continue heading our direction. Down the center of our lane. Instead of veering around the lumbering beast, we decided to shift into neutral, and slowly drift backward down the lane, maintaining a bit of space between us and the approaching hairy mammoth, lest he should decide to change direction at any time. He didn't. He kept coming straight at us. Coasting backward down the hill worked until a tour bus came roaring up behind us. The buffalo decided to pass us on the side, coming within two feet of our car as he did so. Look girls, here's a good picture of a buffalo, dont'cha think?

We have discovered the proverbial grease that makes the whiny part of the vacation quiet down: Personal CD players and headphones. Sometimes they would listen to their own CD's, sometimes they would share. You could tell when they were sharing because they would be crooning to the same song. Other than the obviously amusing way our girls would slaughter a song, there was the humorous way in which their hearing was affected:

Me: Look girls, antelope!

Daughter: Canteloupe? Where?!

or

Daughter: When was the fire, Daddy?

Me: About 17 years ago.

Daughter: Twelve hundred years?! Hey McKay, the fire was twelve hundred years ago!