Well, my favorite park is the big one, the Old Firm, as it were: Yellowstone. I am a geyser gazer, tried and true, but I had something built into me before I even knew it was there. I tried this exercise: If you had to please no one, and could go anywhere you wanted, and do anything you wanted, for a vacation, what would it be? Where would you go? I was quite surprised to discover myself saying, "Spend ten days in the Old Faithful Inn, collecting geysers." Up to this point I had never even entered the Old Faithful Inn, let alone stayed there. Now, I can't imagine staying anywhere else.

The Inn is one of America's greatest treasures: the largest free- standing log structure in the world. A five-story atrium, open to the roof, greets the visitor who enters through the immense, massive doors of the Inn. In the "old section", the walls are rough-hewn planks and the bathroom is down the hall, but the antique furniture fits right in, the steam heat works, and the view from the window is unique on the planet.

Most people come, see Old Faithful, and leave. They've seen a great show, and most of them know it and show it. But there are things to be seen and done in Yellowstone by those who are not afraid to leave the road that cannot be imagined. I have seen the discovery of a new geyser. I have seen areas which are visited only once per year, if that much, with sulphur crystals littering the ground and an entire hillside roaring and hissing through a hundred steam vents. I have seen a hot spring, unknown by anybody else, which bubbles and gurgles through a blood-red throat.

And I'm not particularly athletic! These things are all within a mile of a road. The trick is in finding out where to go, and having the will to go there. There are hundreds of active geysers in Yellowstone, with new ones appearing and old ones reactivating all the time. In other national parks, if you go into a back-country area, the rangers will tell you what you saw when you come out. In Yellowstone, if you enter a back-country thermal area, the rangers will ASK YOU what YOU saw when you come out, because these things change all the time. You don't have to go back for very many years before you will see something that no one else on earth has yet seen. Yellowstone doesn't just sit there. It's active, and it develops new features all the time.

And when you get tired of waiting for the latest geyser, there's the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the view across the entire park from the top of Mt. Washburn, swimming in the Firehole River, which thanks to all the thermal runoff is about seventy degrees, and more wildlife than most people are willing to believe, from marmots to moose.

Yep, Yellowstone's my favorite park, because it's different every time I go.

Mike O'Brien
obrien@aero.org

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