I wake up
in the middle of the night – hey woman, what’s that noise??? She gets out of
bed and watches through the window: a bus unloading tourists! Some come into
the cabin next to us and the showers start running. What a noise! But soon, my
woman is back to her dreams. In the morning she opens the door to see if fuzzy
Bison is still around. No… no sing of him. All right – get all the bags on the
bicycle and pedal to the General Store for a relaxing breakfast at the picnic
table, a newspaper to read. We don’t want to leave very early – my woman wants
some traffic around her. On our way out of the Village we see fuzzy Bison
sleeping in the meadows. Our first 7 miles are uphill and once in a while, when
no cars are passing us, I hear a bell! My woman uses her bicycle bell to make
noise – she still doesn’t know she can talk to me! Seeing the sign with
information about the fires of 1988 means we reached the top.
Now it should be
easy going (with a few bumps) downhill… but we forgot about Master Wind and he
is not in our favor. This means my boss has to pedal to go downhill… not funny!
At the Gibbon Meadows picnic stop a lot of cars are standing still: there must
be some wildlife to be seen! And yes, on the other side of the river stand two
great elk – grazing and not looking up at all the people watching them.
My
woman thinks they must have strong neck muscles to keep their head up with the
weight of the antlers. She tells me she already feels it when she has to look
up while cycling – carrying the helmet on her head. The Gibbon Falls are good
for another stop – and what a funny bicycle racks do they have here!
At the lowest
point of the day, Madison Jct, my boss takes a rest stop. Boy, she says, the
wind today is blowing hard! We leave the Gibbon River and follow the Firehole
river – along that small canyon where cars can only ride in one direction,
where it’s narrow but beautiful, where it’s steep but who cares, where one can
go swimming…
Once back on the main road, my woman enjoys the relaxing
atmosphere of the Firehole river, which is now in contrast when it ran through
the canyon just before. The wind is still not helping us, but I tell my woman
to just pedal and enjoy. In this slower tempo we will still get where we want
to go to. There is no sign of bad weather, so why hurry. We take the walks on
the boardwalk at the lower and midway basins.
Hot steam engulfs us and this is
contrast with the air blown by the wind. The steam and the silhouettes of the
people make it look like some spooky movie. Fragile flowers are able to grow on
this soil. And the different colors of the basins are just so awesome.
Old
Faithfull is just a couple of miles down the road – plenty of tourists to see
there!
To get away from them one can walk all around this basin. There is
Castle geyser, which doesn’t really look like a castle – my woman sees a face
in it!
Her hungry stomach and a warning sign bring her back to the crowds. It’s
time for some food and then an evening program with the rangers. When she
returns to the room, she tells me that she learned about how bison drule and
pee on themselves and roll in the dirt for one reason: to get female bison like
them! So that’s what fuzzy Bison was doing yesterday!
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