out of the blue

The last day of the Yellowstone trip we got up and packed quickly. The tent was soaked, so we just rolled it up and threw it in the back of the car to deal with later. We drove north until we reached the Old Faithful region.

While the previous day had been a mixture of perfect and miserable weather, this day was consistently cold, drizzly and windy. We were torn between the intriguing bubbling and the crazy colors of the geyser basins on one hand, and the cozy warmth of the car on the other. So we confined ourselves to a loop around Geyser Hill, rather than going on some of the longer walks down the Firehole River.

Geysers are hard to photograph. They are dynamic fountains of boiling hot mineral water; they never stay still and they generate whole haunted villages worth of steam to obscure their form. My camera wasn't fast enough in the overcast morning light to catch any great pictures of geyser eruptions, although Sarah had more luck with her camera. Easier to capture are the bright bacterial greens and oranges and reds, the silica ledges around that rim the steaming pools, the hardy geyser grass and the stunted lodgepole pines. It's a desolate landscape there — Sarah called it "blighted" — and the effects are magnified on such a miserable day.

We went on from the Upper Geyser Basin to Biscuit Basin (don't ask me where it gets its name), home to Sapphire Pool and Shell Geyser. It's more restrained than the Old Faithful Area, tending toward pools and bubblers rather than large-scale geysers. Then we drove out along the Firehole River until we reached the boundaries of the park.

I drove until we got to I-90, where Sarah took over. She was unusually keen on driving, and seemed to enjoy the entire leg to Missoula. As she drove, the clouds came in waves over the land, and the sun struck rays through the gaps. When we came over the last pass into the vast Missoula valley, the sun gave a final burst of light and then disappeared behind a solid wall of clouds. I got back behind the wheel.

It drizzled through the rest of Montana. When we crossed into Idaho it had grown into a steady downpour. Not a torrential downpour, but thin pervasive sheets of rain like you get on the Oregon Coast. It was almost indistinguishable from the spray kicked up by semitrucks. We drove up and down passes. By the time we entered into the upper reaches of the valley that drops down to Coeur d'Alene, I was exhausted. It was another 40 miles to Spokane. I took them sorely, in a physical sense.

Luckily, Spokane has decent sushi, even if it is expensive. We comforted ourselves with a few rolls, then came back to the apartment for tea before Sarah had to hit the road again to make it to Pullman. Apparently she got her snails nestled safe and sound in the lab, then got some sleep herself.

All in all, it was a great weekend. Bloody lot of driving, but time spent with Sarah is always a plus, even in the cramped quarters of her car. One of these days we're going to have to go back and see Yellowstone properly.