Yellowstone has more biomes in a relatively small area than I think nearly any place in the world. The conditions range from chaparral to desert to coniferous forest to freshwater lake to mountain deciduous forest to mixed-grass prairie . . . well, you get the idea. Our first day in Yellowstone was spent looking for animals (of the which we found at least eighteen distinct kinds) and visiting some of the smellier parts of the park. We first, though, went to Yellowstone River’s Upper and Lower Falls. What amazed me was the sheer volume of water that goes over the falls. Words and photos just can’t capture the power of that water. After the falls, we went to the Mammoth Hot Springs, most of which are currently dormant. We did see a few that were active, but none had extremely distinctive colors or activity. The more interesting–and pungent–of our geothermal area stops was the Norris Geyser Basin. I’m not sure what biome sulfurous forest is; maybe it’s a biome all its own. The trees all around the geysers and the pools were twisted and stripped of most of their bark, probably because of the fumes from the pools. The smell was sulfurous–rotten eggs. Although I can’t imagine living around these toxic pools, in the wintertime, animals often come to lie in and around them to keep warm. It’s amazing how even in these stinky pits, God has provided a survival mechanism for the animals of the area.

See the gallery for pictures.

Today we embarked on the last leg of our journey before Yellowstone National Park. We stopped to make a side trip on our long drive to Devils Tower National Monument, the first national monument in the country. It’s very difficult to describe the rock without pictures, but it looks something like a can of drinking straws without the can. The rock formed that way because it’s a leftover from a volcano of a very long time ago (just how long ago is a matter for discussion). Today, it’s a sacred site for American Indians, so they have left many prayer cloths and bundles tied to trees around the base of the rock.

After we left Devils Tower, we drove to Cody, Wyoming. Along the way, we ran into some unexpected weather–snow! It snowed fairly hard for quite a while, but the roads stayed clear. By the time we got close to Cody, all the snow was gone. We stopped in Cody at Bubba’s Bar-B-Que, which I’d highly recommend to anyone in the area–their sauce is excellent. After Cody, the drive wasn’t too long before we reached our lodging for the next three days: Elephant Head Lodge. It was nearly dark when we arrived, so we didn’t have much chance to explore the area, but we still aren’t sure which rock around here is the official “Elephant Head.” The inside of the lodge is lovely; it’s very homey and well kept-up. Tomorrow, it’s into Yellowstone.

See the gallery for pictures.

Today we went to Custer State Park near Rapid City, South Dakota. Our main purpose in going there was to hunt wildlife–with cameras, of course. I hoped most of all to see a bighorn sheep, but there were plenty of other wildlife to be seen too. We saw bison up close, and from a distance we saw deer and pronghorn antelope. We also saw some human-desensitized, attention (and food)-hungry burros, which had been part of a park program long ago and had been released into the park when the program was discontinued. These burros like to travel in herds, coming up to cars (and even into cars, as Andrew and Melanie discovered) in search of food or whatever else they can find. A burro came so close to our van that it steamed up the driver-side window with its breath. But the burro that visited Andrew and Melanie (who had their windows down) put his head inside their car. (For more details, check their blog.) But alas! no bighorn sheep were sighted in Custer.

The most amazing part of Custer was the section called “Needles.” The Needles are rock formations that are very thin and tall, just like, well, needles. One particular section, called Cathedral Spires, is considered so unique that it’s been declared a national landmark. God carved those cathedral spires to glorify Himself–it’s too bad that many manmade cathedrals are places where He is not glorified.

After Custer, on we went to Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Carved on the mountain face are the heads of four presidents–Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln. They are amazing. Because it was rather rainy today, the presidents almost looked as though they were crying. The monument was created mostly using very specific charges of dynamite to blast away the mountain and form the heads. It truly is a timeless testament not only to the presidents honored on the mountain, but also to the sculptor, and to the men who helped him blast the mountain into a monument.

See the gallery for pictures.

On Sunday, we stayed in St. Joseph, Missouri. We went down to the Missouri River–the Big Muddy–and took some pictures. On Monday, our main stop was in the Badlands of South Dakota. They were amazing. The prairie drops off into a vast expanse of desert-like hills of stone. The stone mountains are striated red and white. Of course, the signs around the park have all sorts of wonderful “reasons” for the striation, but it seems to me that God sent a Flood that may have had something to do with the layering. Scientists have found all kinds of aquatic fossils in the hills, leading them to believe that water once covered the area. Fancy that.

Sometimes the Badlands are almost normal-looking hills, but in some places they look like a moonscape–desolate and waterless. As Dad suggested, maybe this is where the Apollo missions really went. :) (Of course, I don’t exactly subscribe to the theory that we never made it to the moon.) Above all, I was impressed by how gracious our Creator is. The Badlands are a example of the many geological formations in which God used an utter catastrophe to make something breathtakingly beautiful. Truly, “if I don’t praise Him, the rocks are gonna cry out,” as the old Negro spiritual says.

See the gallery for pictures of the Badlands and the Missouri River.

We set out on Friday, May 25, for Clarksville, TN, where we overnighted before wending our merry way to St. Louis, MO. After half an hour of driving around the St. Louis park where the zoo is housed, we finally found spots and walked the twenty minutes to the zoo. It was a very nice zoo (of course, I like zoos as a general rule). One of the most interesting parts of the zoo was the butterfly house, within the insectarium. When you walk into the butterfly house, you get a card with probably twenty or more butterfly species, and you get to self-identify the butterflies that are flitting all around you without any cages to hold them in. They fly everywhere, even landing on people (two landed on Daddy’s shoulder). But we couldn’t stay long in the butterfly house or even see the entire zoo–we had an appointment with the Gateway Arch in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

We went to a movie at the Arch called “Monument to Dreams,” a documentary about the engineering and construction of the Arch. The design by Eero Saarinen (the architect) was very stable but also very innovative–and challenging to execute. After the movie, we got to experience Saarinen’s design firsthand as we rode the tram to the top of the Arch and looked out over St. Louis on one side of the Mississippi River, and “the West” (complete with riverboat casino) on the other side.

Overall, Missouri hasn’t been my favorite state ever, but the zoo and the Arch were worth stopping for. Right now, we’re in St. Joseph, MO, on the other side of the state, just north of Kansas City. Tomorrow, we start the trail in earnest, following the Oregon settlers and the forty-niner gold miners. We head for Rapid City, South Dakota, and from there, on to Wyoming on Wednesday. Our pace will be considerably quicker (we plan to cover 650 miles in one day) but the scenery, from what I hear, has changed little since prairie schooners plowed the high grasses under their wooden wheels.

See the gallery for pictures of the zoo and arch. For more detail, read my brother and sister-in-law’s blog.

An amusing quotation that I came across: “The only sure thing that can be said about the past is that anyone who can remember Santayana’s maxim is condemned to repeat it.”

The Garland family has a tradition: whenever someone graduates, we take a trip. Usually the trips are short, but sometimes we decide to go all out. Our most recent long trip was in 2001, upon Andrew’s high school graduation, when we went to Boston, through Washington DC and New York, for the 4th of July.

This year, we had graduations aplenty. In fact, we had more members of the family graduate than ones that didn’t. So, in honor of this momentous occasion, we decided to take another long trip. This time, we’re nearly repeating a trip that we took in 1988 (another graduation year–my dad got his masters). Our trek will include St. Louis, Wyoming, South Dakota, Chicago, and several other stops, but we’re leaving Andrew and Melanie in Wyoming. They’re working at Red Cliff Bible Camp for the summer before they head to Blacksburg, VA, in the fall.

Tomorrow, we hitch our wagons (a Chrysler Town & Country and a Ford Taurus) and go west.

First in an occasional series

Last summer I worked as a waiter at an IHOP here in Greenville, and last week I started back again. As a waiter, I observe lots of people and usually come away each night with a few stories. Were I giving advice to an aspiring novelist, I would suggest that he do a stint as a waiter to learn about characterization. Samuel Eliot Morison gives similar advice to aspiring historians.

Lest I forget my observations of the human condition, I intend to record them here. Thus, I am beginning an occasional series titled “What the Waiter Sees.” I hope you will gain some amusement and perhaps some insight from these anecdotes about nights spent waiting tables.