Last Day in Yellowstone National Park—June 29, 2024

Yesterday we met our oldest granddaughter, Lillie, and drove the south loop in the park. It was great day! Lillie is here because she is working at Canyon Village in Yellowstone this summer. Every year, Yellowstone National Park Lodges hires more than 3,000 summer seasonal workers for in-park operations. Many of the seasonal workers are college students who want a summer adventure, and that’s Lillie’s story. We saw a lot of sights and took tons of cool pictures. It was certainly a day to remember.

Today we drove the north loop of the park up to Mammoth Springs and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It made me think of the time we came here in the 70’s with Doug’s parents. We had never seen anything like Yellowstone and wanted to stop at every single place and take a million pictures. About the third day, Doug’s mother, Florence, was fed up with our constant stops. She said, “Do we have to stop again? If you’ve seen one geyser, you’ve seen them all!” I really miss her. She was just so real and so, so funny. And after the last couple of days, I see what she was saying. There are more than 500 geysers in Yellowstone. This time we probably saw about 50 of them.

We have seen both bison and bears today, and people are nuts. They walk right up to wild animals like they are in a petting zoo. If there’s a bear close to the road, there is always a park ranger there making sure everyone is keeping their distance. But if it is a bison, there are no rangers to police the situation and people are out of control. Made me wonder how many people have been trampled or gored by bison? Apparently, it happens fairly often. Bison have injured more people in Yellowstone than any other animal, according to park records. On average, there are one to to two reported incidents of of bison injuring visitors annually. However, bison at the park have not killed any people in the last five years. Good to know!

I am kind of at the end of my rope with the large summer crowds at Yellowstone. It’s not the screaming children or the people who don’t give you even half the walkway or sidewalk. It’s not even the people who stand smack dab in the middle of a busy sidewalk looking at their phone. I reached my limit tonight at Lake Yellowstone Lodge in the large lobby looking out over gorgeous Lake Yellowstone listening to a string quartet that was playing the most beautiful, heart-rending music ever. The people at the table next to us were playing some stupid card game and were whooping and hollering. They didn’t even see the view or hear the music. They didn’t care about other people who were trying to enjoy both. That bugged me to no end.