Day 12, Tuesday, June 28

Yellowstone is amazing. Evidence of the 1988 fire is every where you look but underneath that you notice the forest healing itself everywhere. Apparently the fire was caused by a lightning strike and back then it was thought that if a fire was started by natural causes, it should be allowed to proceed naturally. Unfortunately, in the past, smaller fires had been extinguished leaving a very old forest with lots of shrub ground cover that had never been burned back. Also, the park was in the middle of several years of hard drought and experiencing heavy winds What that all added up to was the perfect recipe for fire that flashed out of control almost immediately and eventually burned nearly 800,000 acres (36%) of the park. Something like 25,000 people worked to get the fire under control but in the end, it was rain and snow in September the finally extinguished it. More than the fire facts, what is amazing to me about the park is the intense geological and ecological variety the park packs into such a relatively small area. Within a 60 mile drive you can go from flat woodlands, up steep mountain sides and rough ravines onto a flat grassland plateau, then through areas with geysers and ground temps over 200 F due to thin mantle conditions, down into heavily wooded lands around Yellowstone river and finally into the "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone where Yellowstone river plunges through a ravine cut thousands of feet deep. It’s utterly breathtaking. Unfortunately, today was both cold and rainy for patches throughout much of the day and while the sightseeing was amazing, Tania never got warmed up. We got some great pictures, but by evening we were both ready for a warm sleeping bag.Tania had arranged for a campsite at the Madison campground for the evening, but the weather REALLY did not cooperate with the idea of camping. Rainy, windy, and very cold. Tania got a nice fire going and we roasted some hot dogs, but even in front of the fire Tania couldn’t get warmed up. Her summation of it was that if every day of camping were like that, she’d never camp again!Oh yeah, one last thing. No showers at Madison campground. So we went to bed not just cold and wet, but also stinky! Whoo Hoo!