By Kimberley.Troutte On Jul 20 2012, 7:20 am

I just got home from the most amazing road trip with my family to Yellowstone. We put over 3,000 miles on our car and saw bits and pieces of most of the Western United States. It was truly and completely awesome.

I knew Yellowstone would be amazing, but what I didn’t expect was the up-close and personal experience. Did you know that the public can walk down inside the caldera’s basin? You can meander along a wooden pathway that has no railings and get within feet from the bubbling, hissing, and occasionally shooting geysers. Signs tell you to stay on the path because the earth’s crust is thin and it is possible to fall in.

Um, yeah. A bit scary.

One geyser exploded while we were there, shooting higher than Old Faithful (my son's picture of Old Faithful is above). People standing nearby were completely drenched with cool water. Apparently, the scalding water had cooled in the air before falling back down. The next day the newspaper reported that this was a special occurrence. That geyser had not gone off like that in decades. It took out the walkway around it and closed that part of the park…

What if someone had been leaning over, getting a good picture at the time? Shiver.

The whole place smells like rotten eggs–or as my son said–a dog that ate rotten eggs two days ago. But there is a beauty in Yellowstone that can’t be properly described. The second picture above is of one of the many pools in the park. Some of the color comes from bacteria that live in the super-hot water. Imagine that. We live on an amazing planet.

Being in such an unusual locale heats up my imagination. Plot bunnies hop out of my writer’s brain offering up fodder for rescue stories, survival situations, apocalyptic scenarios, love and the hunky (park ranger, tour guide, search and rescue leader, scientist, environmentalist…).

And that’s the way it is being an author. Stories are everywhere, even bubbling beneath my feet. 

Have you been to Yellowstone? If so, what was your favorite thing about it?

Kimberley Troutte

www.kimberleytroutte.com

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