Thursday 17 July 2008 at 12:09 am.
Used tags: yellowstone
I am back from Yellowstone. Technically I was back a little over 24 hours ago, but I have been dinking around and coding all day. Despite having thrills and fun I am still exhausted. We combed our site with GPS and sample collection at our site for several days. As a result I have a nice farmers tan and an array of bug bites. I can't talk alot about the data or what we found as it is unpublished research. What I can say is that we are going to try and put a curriculum unit together and attempt to publish it in one of the science education journals.
We did have some fun fun. One night we went to a Rodio, my first. Our head instructor use to go to a lot of them when she was younger. She got very excited, I would say even joyful. That emotion you see on middle age people when they encounter something from their youth that they haven't encountered in a long time. That kind of joy. Another instructor also got very excited, but mostly over the cowboys (and God DAMN were some of them GORGEOUS!).
This little adventure wrapped up at Old Faithful again. We made reservations at the lodge for dinner. My meal was wild boar. I'm not a big fan of large portions of mean, but this was the right size for my tastes. For being a relatively small dish it was quite filling. Thankfully the government is covering my $40 meal! The two young people who served us tried to stuff nine of us into a table for eight. One of us went to complain and found out that the two didn't speak any English. I don't blame them for being put into a position where they are the first contact with the customer. I also find it ironic that the only organization willing to give these people a job is the federal government. Word gets around that our National Parks are a good place to hang out and work during the summer, so a lot of people from other countries come and travel i the US and work at the parks to replenish their funds.
After dinner we wanted to take a final group photo in front of Old Faithful blowing. While we waited for everyone to show up we did a bunch of silly photos. One of which was a series of stop motion animation. A flock of young adults walked by to which we invited them to join us. They did. Yay random people! Old Faithful wasn't going off, so we decided to take a nice picture in the sunset.
Despite the fun adventures and the near encounter with a bear, and my WAY to close encounter with a herd of bison while going to the bathroom (they were a lot closer than this picture!) I am glad to be home. I missed my boyfriend terribly. Seeing him again and holding him in my arms was the best thing ever. It usually always is.
