A Day of Fire

Has it really been May 28 since I've last written? I'm intending to write 2 blogs a week, unless too much excitement happens and I need to write more. Unfortunately, I have been totally down and out with the big, bad bug I caught. I spent last Tuesday and Wednesday (my "weekend" or days off) in bed alternating between coughing fits and comatose sleeping. Thursday also became a no-work day as I was still coughing so much that guest interaction would have been nearly impossible. I was sorely needed on Friday morning, however, as one of our GSAs (Guest Service Agent) was sent to Lake Hotel to help out during their severe staff shortage, shorting us on staff Friday morning. Armed with cough drops (hopefully none of the Xanterra higher ups read this as we're not supposed to eat anything while at the front desk) to keep from coughing on anyone, I successfully went off to work. It wasn't too bad to be there as I enjoy the work and it's not so challenging to make my illness situation worse. Alex & I returned from dinner to take a 3 hour nap. When I woke up at 9:30 PM, I realized I'd been struck with (I still can't believe it) PINK EYE. Yes, the great red and oozing conjunctivitis. After removing the goo from my right eye lid, I called the front desk to find that Bonnie, one of my mangers, was still there! "No, please don't come into work tomorrow, but go to the doctor," she instructed. Ugh. There is only one place that I could have gotten it, which I'm somewhat reluctant to reveal on the internet, but am going to anyway - the EDR (Employee Dining Room). The food service is done very sanitarily, but everytime we go to sit down, I think of my mom, a Food and Beverage Manager who is very particular about the sanctity of sanitary food service. She would not approve! The tables in the dining room are clean at the start of every 2-3 hour dining period, but then not cleaned until the dining period is over. How many people are fed at the MHS EDR? 200? Likely more on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays when new employees come in as they all at some point pass through the MHS EDR. During the middle of the dining period, it is nearly impossible to find a clean table. "How many people have sat here before me?" I wonder. Alex and I made our best efforts to have him bring food to me so I could keep my highly contagious infection out of the dining room, but anyone taking food out of the EDR is promptly treated as a criminal and likely terminated, so, alas, back I trooped to the EDR, infectious eye and all. "How many people will sit here after me?" My new motto is to not only wash my hands before I eat, but wash them promptly after, too.

So, that brings us to today. Glorious day - the first day of our weekend. The first day of sunshine. The first day to really travel around the park.

We started the day with our usual great effort to drag ourselves out of bed in order to have breakfast before the EDR closed, only to stumble outside to find a great deal of sunshine. Very mysterious sunshine as the forcast for the next 4 days, something every GSA knows, called for showers. After a great debate over do we go for a hike or do we go for a drive, we determined a hike might be a bit much as we are on the healing end of our colds. A shower and packing of jackets, snacks, cameras later, we hit the road, accompanied by Alex's new co-worker from Bulgaria, Marianna. With undetermined plans, we hit the road heading south towards Norris, to promptly run into a "bear jam" in Swan Lake Flats, about 10 minutes south of MHS. We had difficulty spying the bear among the rolling landscape and now grown up sage brush, but finally sighted her in our binoculars. When she meandered behind a short hill, we thought we would go, but then she appeared again, this time with small black heads popping up from the brush around her. Could it be? Count them... one, two, three, yes, this is the fabled grizzly sow with four cubs. We'd been hearing about this family for a couple of weeks, but hadn't yet seen them. Our lucky day. She finally took her brood into the trees, so we continued our journey south, Marianna snapping photos through the truck window all the way. The scenery is indeed beautiful as we passed through meadows greened by the rain with meandering streams or rushing rivers, bordered by the straight lodgepole pines that dominate the Yellowstone landscape.

When we landed in the Old Faithful area, there was a large crowd already gathered in the Old Faithful viewing area, which typically indicates an eruption is nearing. "5 minutes," we were told. And, "20 minutes," came the word 5 minutes later. So, we waited, watched the spray, then headed for lunch at the local EDR. Could it be better? One could hope, but it was actually exactly the same, minus the windows and with some rearranging of the serving arena. From there, we wandered through the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, the newest of the hotels, to marvel at the splice plate connections of the beams in the lobby, then onto the Old Faithful Inn, the 2nd oldest hotel in the park, just to marvel. From there, we decided to take the 2.8 mile walk through the Upper Geyser Basin, from which we watched Old Faithful erupt 2 additional times. Alex and I are 2 for 2 on seeing the Riverside Geyser erupt. Our timing was nearly perfect 6 years ago, the last time we walked through this geyser basin, although we had to wait about 20 minutes for that eruption to start. This time, we strolled up to Morning Glory Pond, took some pictures, and turned around to see Riverside Geyser erupting. We ran back, only to find out that it erupts for 20 minutes, so there was no need to hurry. The mystery of the trip for me was that the colors of some of the pools seemed to have faded since our trip of 6 years ago. Were they just brighter in my memory? Was it all of the rain and cool weather we've been having? The answer came at the Morning Glory Pond, where the brilliance of the blue center and yellow rim have faded to greens and oranges. My memory hadn't tricked me, as the picture on the plaque beside the pool still proclaimed the bright spectrum of colors of the super hot waters. The pool is cooling, in some part due to natural causes, but mostly because all of the trash thrown into it by the millions of visitors each year is plugging the circulation of the heated water and allowing the pool to cool, causing the thermophiles that live in the pool to change from the blue species to the cooler water colors. There is also a picture of 2 men with a super vac, like the kind used to clean out porta-potties, vacuuming the trash out of the pool, but I guess there is only so much they can do.

Finally, we wandered back to the truck after Marianna bought us ice cream (frozen yogurt for me), and made it back to MHS sunburned and just barely in time for dinner at our home base EDR.