Chris has been bugging me for years to go to Yellowstone. In his Chris-fashion, of course. He has a way of subtley talking about it in glowing terms and reminscing about how he enjoyed his trip there when he was a child.

He finds bits of trivia to bring into the conversation. “Did you know that inside Yellowstone is the cone of a volcano? that’s why it has geysers.”

“Did you know that it’s the first national park ever? Ullyses Grant signed it into being a park even before Yosemite.”

And finally, “Would you want to go there this fall? We could take a week and go there after school starts and the kids will not be crowding it.”

The fact is that, while I enjoy nature, I prefer trips to places of deep history. Like…Paris! Old buildings and interesting shopping is my idea of highly enjoyable.

Also, I like to see new things. I don’t want to read the same books again or vacation in the same place twice. The world is so full, and life is so short, I don’t want to retrace my steps.

But I hadn’t been to Yellowstone. And it did sound pretty good. Yes, Chris, I would go.

And we bought the books. And we gathered the maps. Chris handled the hotels, I handled the airfare. We were set.

Yellowstone was unendingly amazing. We saw so many animals and we saw the kind of landscape you can see nowhere else.

Old faithful was great, but the other geysers surpassed it.

The buffalo were majestic. The moose were focussed on their meals. The bears were funny, and the elk were….Well…it’s was mating season for the elk.

We saw antelopes, but they were not playing with any deer. Maybe that’s early in the season.

The coyotes looked so much like dogs, we wished we could give them treats.

Chris wanted to know if I would be willing to come back. I think so. It would not feel like retracing my steps.