Yellowstone (part one)

For those of you who have asked, here is the beginning of the story of my trip to Montana. Check in daily for updates...it gets pretty good. Just bear with me because I'm starting in the middle.

On the third day of my trip to Montana, we were finally going to visit
Yellowstone. When I was ten, my family drove across the country from
Seattle to Pennsylvania and my siblings and I were promised a visit to
Yellowstone. I remember being excited to drive through the park, see
the wildlife, hike through the steamy trails, and sit and wait until
the great Old Faithful blew his top.

Like many times in my childhood,
my parents made a promise that they didn't keep. Instead, we went to
see the Grand Tetons. Although these are, by far, some of the most
majestic mountains I have ever seen, I was less than impressed
considering the fact that I had been living in Alaska with the mammoth
Mt. McKinley right outside my window. Plus, there was no erupting
geyser at this park. I spent the next 19 years saying that one day, I
would get to Wyoming again and I would see Old Faithful and the other
wonders of Yellowstone Park.

While planning a visit to Montana to see an old friend who recently moved out there, I suggested we go to Yellowstone on one of his days off. His initial reaction was to say "no" and that it was too far, but then he changed his mind the day before I flew out to see him. His idea was to drive part way down and stay in an elite hotel in Livingston and then drive the rest of the way on the next day. He made a deal with me that he would take me and pay for everything as long as I agreed to leave in time to get back to Great Falls for a football game. A football game.

My friend is about to look bad in this story, so I am leaving his name out of it. Also, I have to preface this account by saying he is probably the one person in the world that I love and care about more than anybody else and whom I absolutely adore. He has been part of my life for the last fourteen years and I truly think he is an amazing and wonderful person. However, I still cannot understand how someone could think that a football game could ever trump a natural wonder. Still, he offered to take me on a ten hour round trip to see what I’d been wanting to see and he was paying for it, so I kept my mouth shut…..quite literally, actually, I barely talked the entire trip.