Yellowstone, Day Two

The next day we headed to the Mammoth Hot Springs Area. That was about two hours away. I told you you don't go anywhere quickly in Yellowstone. Anyway, we saw steaming areas of land with water running through. These were geysers that weren't shooting to the sky, but just steaming like a simmering pot of soup. It was threatening rain, and soon started sprinkling. I wasn't about to let that ruin my siteseeing however. I drove a long way to see this, and see it I would! #1 had said that the one thing he wanted to do was to ride a horse. We had tried to schedule that for the first day, but there weren't any spots available. So we said that would be something to look forward to for the next day. Then of course it rained. But once again, God shone his face on our trip! The rain stopped. Not only did the rain stop, but #1 was to have a private horse ride. No one else had signed up. Deciding to make myself "Mother of the Decade" I asked the registrar if I could have a favor. You have to be 12 to ride the horses without a parent, but since there wasn't anyone else going, could my ten year old ride along and I would walk beside them for the "adult chaperone" that was needed. Now it wasn't that I was just dying to walk along, but I knew that #2 was disappointed to not get to ride, though he had chosen to fish as his one thing. I didn't think I could ride the horse for an hour given the condition of my back, and so I asked if I could walk along. (Not to mention that I didn't want to pay for me to ride!) They agreed to allow this, and I sat in on the safety talk before the ride. After the boys were saddled up, I started to walk along. The manager told me if I didn't want to walk along it would be ok, and I said I thought they would be fine. So #1 got his wish to ride a horse, and #2 got to join him. The guide told us at the end that that is something only about 2 percent of the people do...get off the main highway and go into the back country. So the boys had a great time. Having heard that about the tourists, I decided we needed to get off the main roadway. So we took a couple of different backroads and explored a bit. It is was beautiful countryside with lots of wild flowers, grasses, and gorgeous mountain scenery. We stopped to see a petrified tree too. It is fenced off so people will leave it alone, I suppose. It is a redwood tree, which shows that this was once a temperate rainforest area. Then came the volcano explosion that petrified it. I guess it would pertify me too if the earth suddenly threw up a bunch of fire and rock.