The Cool Mustang People

Blog from 8/8-8/9, posted late due to lack of internet:

I'll start off this post with some information as requested by one of my readers! He wanted to know what the storage situation is with Jane. So here are some pictures:

Not everything loaded, but almost everything!

Put the fender covers over everything underneath the cargo net to avoid glare from white objects (the cooler)

I will provide a list of everything that I've managed to fit in my car sometime towards the end of my trip, but am not going to do so now in case someone on the Internet decides that any of my stuff is valuable enough to go hunting for my car to break into it (a hint: it's really not, mostly it's just spare parts and clothes and a tent). Anyways, on to the blog portion! This post comes with an alternate title: Why you should be excited about water that comes out of the ground hot instead of cold!

Friday morning I said goodbye to the Tetons. It was a lovely morning, nice and clear and not nearly as hazy or rainy or generally dismal as it had been in the past couple of days, but nevertheless we decided that it was time to move on.

We headed further north to Yellowstone, America's first national park! Our first night was going to be spent at Mammoth Hot Springs, so we had quite a ways to drive through the summer tourist traffic. We decided that we would stop at the various geyser locations on the way up. First was Old Faithful, of course. Can't say I got a great shot of it because the weather was pretty terrible - very cloudy with a huge storm approaching. We spoke with the rangers at the desk while waiting for some rain to pass and they told us that a bigger storm was on the way with half-inch hailstones. That prompted me to NOPE my way straight out of there, whisking Jane away to safety to the north to outrun the storm.

At one point in time all traffic came to a halt. I looked out my window and lo and behold, there were 6 or so bison holding up the opposite lane of traffic. They were walking slowly down the street towards me and in fact passed a couple of feet away. Scariest part was when the biggest bull bison stopped right next to my car, lifted his head, rolled his eyes back, and sniffed. Think he must have liked the muscle car smell! And I was fine with him liking it but I did not want him to like it so much that he came over to harass Jane.

Mmm, hydrocarbons.

We stopped at Norris Geyser Basin a good ways north where the storm was not likely to make an appearance for a while. Saw some great geysers and hot springs. But the weather darkened again and so we carried on towards Mammoth.

This river was green and orange and blue! Crazy!

Looks like a valley out of prehistoric times

As soon as we got to the hotel (very cool old school) the bottom of the sky felt the need to drop out and so I left Jane sitting under the shelter. I asked the hotel staff about the hailstorm, wondering if I had managed to avoid it, and they told me that it had subsided but that I was welcome to put Jane under the shelter again if the weather got bad. Excellent!

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Saturday morning we awoke to clear skies - finally! We hadn't seen the end of clouds for 3 or 4 days so the sun was very welcome. We started the day at Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces. The Terraces are made of travertine deposited over hundreds of years by upwelling hot springs carrying dissolved minerals that precipitate as they reach Earth's surface. As the water washes out of the springs, the minerals are deposited in terrace structures in some places and cool "drip" features in others.

Liberty Cap, a dormant hot spring that built itself up over thousands of years

We spent quite a while there before heading south towards the Old Faithful area again to see all of the geysers that we had missed yesterday. At some point in time on the road... you guessed it, traffic stopped again! Judging by the frenzied, mad scream of "BEAR!!!" coming from the mouth of the Asian man in the car in the lane next to me, I guessed that traffic was stopped because of a bear. Turns out I was right! How about that. Didn't get a great picture because he was behind some trees, but here is a black bear:

After we had finished gawking at this poor creature, we carried on to our intended destination. Yellowstone is known for housing some of the world's best geysers and hot springs, and we wanted to see as many as possible. Geysers are very extreme environments because of their heat and volatile nature, so they are colonized only by extremophiles - microbes and bacteria that are specialized for the habitat. They come in all kinds of colors and shapes which contribute to the otherworldly look of this crazy environment. Every geyser, hot spring, and mud pot is different in color, shape, mineral deposits, temperature, etc. But here's a few pictures of my favorites:

This is a picture of an osprey eating a fish, not a picture of a geyser, but I like it anyways.

And here's a picture of Jane looking awesome on a scenic drive route:

And here's a picture of a guy examining her closely, which happens quite frequently. As my dad has said, "You know you have something special when people are in one of the most beautiful places in the United States and they still turn to take pictures of your car when you go by".

So I'd like to take the time to reflect on that. Many people have approached me (more often my dad, of course, with the assumption that the car is his) to talk about Jane. Lots just want to say that I have a beautiful car, but some also comment on the fact that it is amazing to just see one being driven. I tell them the story (which gets longer every day) and they are all singularly impressed. And I can't help but think that it's a little sad that it should be so rare to see classics out driving around, and that people think they are so high maintenance that they're impressed when they see them driven. But I'm glad to be in one myself. Lots of the tourists who have approached me are foreign - I believe Yellowstone is in the top 3 most visited places in America for out-of-states tourists - and they've all been so excited to see old American iron in the Wild West. It must catch at their imaginations, as it catches at mine. Ever since I bought Jane I've been prone to flights of fancy, felt that possibilities were endless. So I hope that Jane's contributed positively to peoples' visits to Yellowstone and the USA, or at least provided a brief source of conversation. I hope that, like me, seeing that beautiful blue flash of steel and chrome from bygone days rumble by inspires them to go on adventures and make the most of their lives.

To end this post I'll share my quote of the day from a little girl to her mother as we were walking past in the parking lot (nowhere near Jane): "Look Mommy! It's the cool Mustang people!"

Kelly signing out.