We had this October trip planned for several months and as often happens, life intervened. I had an arthritis flare-up beginning the Monday before we left and it was the worst ever…by far. I had it in my fingers and toes and they were quite painful, but I also had some general aching in my other leg joints. I hobbled around the Family History Library on Tuesday like a “90-year-old woman” and on Wednesday like a “70-year-old woman”. Progress is progress, after all. I also spent some time crying both of those days about how I was going to ruin our vacation and how we wouldn’t get to do anything. You can imagine.
Now comes the part where I tell you why I am the luckiest girl in the world and the smartest thing I ever did was to marry Scott. Assessing the situation early on, he began making plans without telling me. He ordered two-way radios using our Amazon Prime 2-day shipping so that he could hike and I could stay back and read and we wouldn’t have a repeat of the Lassen experience in June. Safety First. He studied the book he had bought a month before with mile markers and detailed info on everything to find stuff we could see that required very little walking, a lot of which were things we hadn’t seen before so I would feel like we were having a real vacation. Then he just expanded his usual vacation attitude. When we go on vacation, he’s always very sensitive about not pushing me too hard and getting me too tired so his attitude is always, “If you feel like it, but we don’t have to.” This trip it was magnified. Yes, I am so blessed.
So what did we actually do? Turns out it was a lot more than I thought we would manage. We began with a stop at my favorite West Yellowstone hangout: The Book Peddler, for hot chocolate and a book. Scott lets me buy a book every time we go there and this time it was The Boys in the Boat because one of my book clubs is reading it next year. Then in to the park for what was left of the day.
We headed to Artist Paint Pots because we have never been able to get a place to park in the summer so have never seen it. There’s a short loop around on a boardwalk and we just took it slow. Think snail’s pace. The colors of the pools and bubbling mud pots were varied and the sounds of some of the springs and pots were so cool! I love that bubbling mud sound. Yellowstone is such an awesome place.
We also stopped at Beryl Spring, which is right by the road, and Terrace Spring, which was a short walk from the parking, so we could explore both of those without me having to do much walking. And without all the summer crowds. It was quite cool that day and got chilly as night came on but a great time to go. We saw bull elk, ducks, trumpeter swans, and a squirrel.
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