Hailie and I had been planning a trip to Wyoming to go and see her family from the moment we both got our second vaccine. We hadn’t seen them, or a lot of my family on the other side of Idaho, since before the pandemic began. We were only taking a 4-day weekend, and we didn’t really have a lot of time for any one activity, so I packed our schedule as tightly as possible so we could get a little bit of everything with the time we had. This is largely going to be a post about family, and why I love eastern Idaho / western Wyoming.

When I think of Idaho, I think of summers growing up at my grandparents, I think of what Idaho is. Both my Grandma Lucy and Grandpa Terry are the earliest impressions of “work hard & take no shit.” Grandma worked at the North Hi-Way Cafe for close to 40 years, the same job that my mom had also worked, alongside her. Grandpa owns RayCo Plating & Antiques, and has always had his hands in this or that. As long as I’ve had memories, I’ve always known grandpa to be in one of two places, at the shop or in his garage. Grandpa has always loved cars, and growing up it wasn’t uncommon to see restored Model-T’s at the antique shop, or the random repossessed mob boss car he was currently working on in his garage. I never knew if the stories about the mob bosses were true, but the cars were always amazing. About a decade ago, he ran out of space to store his cars, so they built a separate building. In doing this, the existing garage could become his home workshop, and then he would have a dedicated space for his show cars.

Now, this is important context to the luck that the universe bestowed upon this trip. I had zero intention of getting to see Grandpa’s garage this trip. It was a workweek, and he was going to be at the shop on Friday and Monday, so his garage would be considered Fort Knox, as it always had been since I was a kid.

We made our way to Idaho Falls and we were able to catch my mom, nephew, grandma, aunt, and uncle, all at the same place at the same time, and it was nice to just sit around and catch up for a while.

Now, I hadn’t mentioned it earlier, but this weekend trip would be my first real opportunity to get some use out of the new camera. My grandparent’s house is full of memories (I watched Cory propose to Topanga in their basement), but when I say that their house is unique, I can’t overstate it enough. This is one of my favorite places in Idaho, and this was the first time in my life that I could really capture the best parts of their space.

We were having our visit, and then it happened. Grandpa had to drop something off from his shop, and it needed to go inside his garage. The universe let us enter into Fort Knox.

That was amazing, but we needed to get back on the road. One of the halfway markers between Idaho Falls and Afton is a place that sells square ice cream cones. Huck’s Rainey Creek Store is home to the World Famous Square ice cream cone, and as luck had it, the weekend was the same one that National Ice Cream day landed in, so of course we waited in the RIDICULOUSLY long line for a cone. Worth it, but once again, we needed to get back on the road.

Once we arrived into Star Valley, I started recognizing my home away from home. Hailie grew up in a very rural, Wyoming town. The first time she ever took me home, I made note that the biggest town still had 700 people less than the company I worked for in Boise. A lot of people think these are towns that you drive through, and not the destination themselves. For the past few years, I have come to understand how easy it is to fall in love with living out in the country, especially one as gorgeous as Wyoming.

That first night we arrived, we met up with Hailie’s sister and nephew and had dinner at the Red Baron, a drive in burger shack that’s been around since before Hailie was in high school.

This weekend was already feeling hectic on the road, and a drive in with no overflow parking was the perfect example of a small business being overwhelmed by the influx of people going out to national parks and stopping into small towns. As a small business owner, I can attest to it being a good problem to have, but it’s always interesting to see how other businesses encounter it. We circled around the parking lot for two laps until someone pulled out of their spot and we could snag it before one of the other circling vultures could come in for the picking.

This was my precursor to the upcoming Sunday. A lot of my clients had been warning me about visiting Yellowstone, telling me that they didn’t even think it would be worth the visit because of the amount of people that were ruining nature. Between their warnings and some of the pictures I had seen circling online, it seemed like 2020 was the year that the entire country wanted to see old faithful and the surrounding park at the exact same time, and now that the vaccinated were safe to go back out, the rest of the country was visiting in 2021.

Taking all of this into consideration, I had already decided that Yellowstone wasn’t going to be what it was when I was a kid, I could not go into this thinking it was going to be me and one other family at the most famous landmark in the country’s first national park. With that in mind, I gave myself the mission to “document humans in their unnatural environment.” This would do two things, first off it would give me some direction on what I wanted to take pictures of, and secondly it would lessen my disappointment in coming across other people. Embrace the suck.

Saturday was largely spent with family. Hailie went through the attic with her mom while I went and had lunch with a friend I hadn't seen in years. When I got back, Hailie and her mom had been going through old VHS in their basement and books in the attic to find things that we would be coming home with to help sort and sell for them downsizing into a smaller home that is currently being built a few hundred yards down the road.

That evening, we took the forester out to go camping in the Bridger Tetons. At home, it usually takes somewhere around 90 minutes to find a decent camp spot out of the city, usually 2 hour minimum to get decent camping away from people. Out here, it takes 20 minutes. Even with the influx of people we saw camping throughout the Palisades and RV’s on the road, we found an isolated spot to set up camp and enjoy the evening.

Enough foreplay, let’s get to some Yellowstone action.

Let’s talk objectively about the elephant in the room, there are a lot of people in the park. Here is my shortened takeaway - Just because it isn’t the same experience that it once was, does not make it an enjoyable experience; & just because somebody else is enjoying an experience, as long as they are doing it respectfully it will not detract from your own ability to enjoy the experience. We wound up entering the southern entrance and doing a clockwise rotation of the lower loop for a solid 8 hour drive, and this was the one and only piece of litter that I saw during any of our stops. For the most part, it was people my age or a little older taking their kids to enjoy the park for the first time. I don’t think it’s reasonable to get mad at people who, seemingly for the most part, are still very respectful of nature and just trying to appreciate it the same any of us are. But if you also take note of the same picture that has the capri-sun wrapper, look at how far away the closest people were. The absolute worst place that we saw a congregation of people was Old Faithful, and that’s because we specifically went during a peak time for me to get pictures of the people, but it also makes sense that you will run into more people in the larger attractions, and some of the side roads have some real great opportunities to explore and get rewarded.

Old Faithful

I wanted to camp, so we brought the Forester. Hailie wanted to drive through Yellowstone, so she brought the STI. This gave us the best of both worlds, because I could quickly jump out the side of the car or peek my head out the sunroof for some decent pictures.

As we were pulling up to Old Faithful, I asked her, “Do you know what we’re looking for?” Right at that moment, we see a geyser erupting behind the trees around the next turn. “It will look like that.” We were pulling up in the moments that Old Faithful had erupted, so we were able to quickly grab one of the parking spots that had vacated in an incredibly full parking lot. We walked through the swarm of humans exiting the park to find a relatively empty Old Faithful.

We had about 90 minutes to kill before the next eruption, so we started walking around the boardwalk to see a few of the geothermic formations. After 30 minutes of walking, we decided we needed more water than we had on hand, and I needed a hat. We went into the visitor center, and we found ALL OF THE PEOPLE. It only took five minutes to grab a hat and some water, but close to 45 minutes to get through the line. This is at no fault of the park. It’s just like the drive in, they are not adequately staffed for the amount of people that have recently come to the area, and they can only work as fast as they can. We didn’t miss the eruption, we did however miss the park filling up. While we were hanging out in the AC, quietly having a panic attack that I was going to miss the eruption because of how long the line was taking, all of the spaces in the viewing area filled to the brim.

Yeah, that’s a lot of people.

Then Old Faithful did the thing. that instagram was made for. Humans took photos, and anticipating their inevitable and simultaneous departure, I suggested to Hailie that we leave after 90 seconds of picture taking so we could beat the rush out of the parking lot. She agreed, and we were wildly successful in escaping the roadside attraction before the chaos of traffic began.

Firehole Canyon Drive

After leaving Old Faithful, we had a few spots we wanted to see very specifically, but we noticed a road on the car’s map that was going alongside a river that wasn’t connected to the grand loop. As we drove a few minutes down the road, I noticed that the road eventually connected back, so I had Hailie circle back to see what we could see down by the river. At first it was just a few people hanging out and playing in a river bank, but as I turned around, there was a restored tour bus from the 30’s passing us on one of their tours. We kept the same path as the tour bus and saw a handful of rapids in the canyon below, caught a glimpse of the waterfall, but it was the end of the road that I had the single most unique Yellowstone animal experience.

I have a habit of being a sucker for struggling selfie takers. I rarely have pictures of myself on vacation because I’m typically the one behind the camera. Selfies are never as good as photographs (IMO), and if I see a couple taking pictures of one another, I’ll usually interject and ask if they want me to take the picture for them. The world needs more random acts of kindness and this one costs little more than 30 seconds of time, regardless, there was a father and son taking pictures of themselves by the side of the canyon, and I did my thing. When they stepped to where they thought would be decent, I asked them to take two steps back so I could take three steps closer to the edge of the cliff. This sidestep is what allowed me to see a giant blob of white appear in the canyon. I took the picture, and told them, “I did my nice thing, now I need to go figure out what the universe is rewarding me with.” I climbed down about 20 feet to get a better vantage point, and clear as day, a pelican was sitting on a shallow rock, fishing in the river.

Take the road less traveled and be kind to strangers, the universe will reward the effort.

Gibbon Falls & Artist’s Paint Pots

There are cool stories about what happens in Yellowstone, and then there are scenic attractions that you take pictures of in-between those stories. This is one of those sections, so take your eye candy and stop asking me questions.

Traffic Jams

I was told to expect a lot of cars on the road, but we never really found ourselves going anything less than the posted speed limits. After we left the Artist’s Paint Pots, we encountered the first traffic jam, but it was nothing that hadn’t been in seen in Yellowstone in any number of prior years. If there is an animal on the side of the road, humans will stop to take pictures. If there are animals in the middle of the road, humans will take pictures (because they have already been stopped by the animal they now get to take pictures of). These are the traffic jams to get excited about.

Cause, meet Effect.

When a bison walks a breath away from you, it’s really hard not to be intimidated by how much power is staring at you. It absolutely blows my mind the amount of people that get uncomfortably close to certain aspects of nature without taking heed to all of the warnings that are everywhere through the park.

Fortunately, I didn’t see people being stupid in real life. I saw a lot of people taking pictures, but that’s because I was one of them, and we were all at a comfortable distance. You’ll see these traffic jams coming up in the distance, and it almost gets you excited because you have no idea what you are going to run across.

Then we saw it, the traffic jam that would keep our attention for a solid 20 minutes until emergency services drove by and told everyone to clear the road. Seeing a random young bison on a paved intersection is an odd juxtaposition of nature meeting mankind. When you see the same animal with the context of a herd in an area they would naturally occupy, it’s something worth taking a moment to appreciate, and so we did.

Oh… where the buffalo roam.

Artist’s Point & Black Dragon’s Cauldron

It was getting late at this point, we had been in the car or walking for around 12 hours and we still needed to drive back to Hailie’s parent’s house. We decided to limit ourselves to a few last stops and then make our way back. When we stopped by the Canyon Visitor Education Center, there was a sandwich board that said “Best Pictures - Artist’s Point.” I looked at Hailie and said, “I trust that, let’s just go straight there.”

Cool. Trust the experts and get results. More life lessons from Yellowstone.

Hailie had sworn three times prior to this point that she was done with hikes, but she kept finding herself on her feet with significantly less energy and motivation than her husband who only has an on and off switch when it comes to being outdoors, and I was clearly nowhere close to the end of my battery. But she’s good sport, so onward to the lakes of acid!

Fisherman’s Bridge & Yellowstone Lake

We were originally going to take a counter-clockwise approach to the lower loop, but because we missed a turn we quickly decided to make a clockwise loop instead of cycling back. This seemingly random event that we leaned into allowed me to experience a few things unique to the trip.

I would have missed Firehole Canyon entirely because of how we stumbled upon it. No pelican and no tour bus.
I would have missed catching the quantity of people at Old Faithful during the peak hour of the weekend, which I legitimately wanted to take pictures of.
I wouldn’t have been able to experience the beautiful sunset at fisherman’s bridge and over Yellowstone Lake

I struggle a lot with situations I don’t have control over, and this trip to Yellowstone provided me many teachable moments. Sometimes, it’s okay for plans to go wrong. It might be better, it might be worse, who knows? What we do know is that it’s going to be different, and different isn’t bad, so try not to let it ruin your whole experience. Objectively speaking, now that I’m getting to the tail end of my trip I realize that this turned out so much better than what I was planning on for myself.

As we left Fisherman’s Bridge and started making our way home, we made our final stop at Yellowstone Lake. Golden hour at the lake?

Yes, please.

And that was how we spent our one day in Yellowstone.

Sage Raceway

The next day, we said our goodbyes and made our way back on the road to Boise.

Stopping through Idaho Falls, we visited my Grandpa, just outside of Idaho Falls at his shop, Rayco Plating. After a quick visit and being told each picture would cost me $2, we decided that we’d get my first look at the race track my grandpa had opened a few years prior.

My grandpa really is like the Willy Wonka of the Drag Racing community of Eastern Idaho. He had been driving across state lines for years to showcase his cars, but got sicks of all the hassle a few years back, so he built his own racetrack. As timing had it, he started his race track around the same time I started building a new career as a barber. As such, I never could afford to take time off during the weekends (when I was the busiest) to go to the other side of the state to check out the races. Today, I’d get a chance to stop by the track without any of the spectators or mechanics, and just appreciate what my grandpa had built.

First thing to know about Sage Raceway, is that it is in the middle of nowhere. Basically, you drive out to some farm land, and then you keep driving through all of the fields of crops. Eventually, you see a sign pointing you in the right direction.

Once you go past that sign, you keep going through fields and fields of agriculturally zoned America. Just when you think you’ve had enough, it shows up off in the distance. My grandpa calls this place, “Where dreams come true, and you’re 18 again for a little while!”

He isn’t wrong.

As soon as you pull up on the drag strip, it’s quickly recognized as a snapshot of an American past time that reminisces childhood of a past era. My grandpa has poured a lot of sweat equity into turning a dream into reality, and his racetrack is just as much a reflection of himself as his garage, his shop, and his basement are. Even though it was the first time walking through the property, it oozed with the personality of my grandfather everywhere I looked.

This was it. Our destinations had all been checked off, we got to visit a lot of family we hadn’t seen prior to Covid, and then we headed home.

On the drive outside of Twin Falls, it rained a small amount, and I called Hailie to let her know I was going to stop off the bridge for a few minutes to take a few pictures before coming home.

Considering this trip was photo centric, I’m glad this was the cherry on top.

Until next time.

-easytochris

Yellowstone