Old Faithful

Of course, my first destination in Yellowstone was Old Faithful.  This photo of me and the Park's sign was taken by a friendly Chinese couple.  They were taking turns, making individual photographs of them and the sign, so I offered (via gestures?) to take one of them together.  They were super-cute and happy, and then took one of me with my camera (and also with their camera - their slideshow back home in China "And here is a random Caucasian girl who took a photo for us!").

I was very pleased, because they said almost every single Chinese word that I know.  Which is not many.  They counted off pressing the shutter, 'one, two, three,' and then thanked me afterwards.  The only other words I know that they didn't say were 'dumping' and 'little sister'.  Needless say, my Chinese is tailor-made to run a dumpling-eating contest.

A large sign at the Visitors Center posts the predicted geyser eruption time, plus or minus ten minutes.  I got there about 25 minutes before the predicted time, and so headed out to get a good spot on the large wooden boardwalk built a safe viewing distance from the action.

I was all lazy, and not very hungry, so I bought myself a pack of buffalo jerky at some general store place?  It seemed an appropriate snack/lunch for Wyoming, and I later wandered around geysers, standing in the sulfurous fumes to keep warm, eating buffalo jerky.

Go go go!  But alas (!) the drama is decreased due to a sullen grey sky.

A small crowd gathered to watch.  On the other side of me was a small family (dad, boy kid, smaller girl kid) from Wisconsin, and they were being so stereotypically Wisconsin, accent and doofus jokes the whole time.  I alternated between wanting to giggle at all their doofusing or punching them all to make them shut up.