Day 2 - Of geysers and bears

Well, after the luxury of the ranch, our next campsite was a wak-up call. Not only did we have to pitch tents in the dirt of a forest floor, there were no showers, sinks or flushing toilets. There's a good reason for this... we were in Bear Country.

Aside:
Q: How can you tell if a park guide is lying?
A: Their mouth is moving.

But is that always the case...?

American ranches / campsites / tours (based on an admittedly small sample) appear to be run by peopel who take great pleasure in telling the tour equivalent of the ghost story - the ranch / campsite / activity horror story. The background of this particular one goes as follows:

• There are bears around.
  
• Bears have a good sense of smell.
  
• If you keep food or toiletires in your tent, they will take an unwelcome interest.
  
• If you drop food on the ground, they will take an unwelcome interest.

So after the simple tales of people getting eaten in their tents, it got more complicated. We heard about the guy who spat toothpaste out on the ground, then had a bear follow the trail to the tent during the night. That one didn't end well either.

The upshot was that two of the younger members of the party decided that they would sleep on the bus and refused to go in a tent. Unbelievable, especially as we were probably the most careful group on the site (toiletries, food, etc all locked away in the trailer that the minibus pulls around, spit toothpaste down the drop toilets, etc).

Anyway, enouh of that, and the tremendous fuss that was made about what I thought was an extremely cute bat that was hanging in the toilets... Yellowstone is what we were there for! We arrived late afternoon after a mammoth 7 hour drive and, quite appropriately, went to Mammoth Springs (description | images, maybe). Some of Yellowstone is in the crater of an extremely old volcano, with magma as close as 5 miles below the surface. This leads to a whole array of springs, geysers, hot pools, and generally sinister bubbling water in a variety of guises.

In these kinds of areas, you get around on boardwalks, with periodic signs in multiple languages warning potential trespassers of the likely consequences, should they venture into the wrong area. The best part is a line drawing of a distressed child, whose foot has just been thrust into boiling water after breaking through a patina of soil. It's not an empty threat - some of the other group members saw a man with a very badly burned foot, where the heat had melted through the sole of his shoe after he'd strayed from the walkway.

I'll write more about hot water features in general in the next post; I liked them...