Yellowstone, My Favorite Place

Yellowstone National Park, my favorite place.
For many years I have headed to this wonderland and gawed, with the rest of the tourists, at the geysers, animals and raw beauty. I have been to this place twice a year for the past 20 years. This year was the first year I have not been to my favorite place. This year was a milestone in my life, 20 years of marriage, so we decided to get brave and head out of the country. This was no small feat with my control issues and anxiety disorder. But, now that I have all of those things tamed I decided, what the hell lets go to Mexico on a cruise. So we did and had the best time of our lives. Then, the daughter, missing out on the cruise was hoping for a trip so we suprised her with a halloween Disneyland trip which was as magical as it sounds.
Now I stare at my past Yellowstone pictures and miss my favorite place.
One year while at Yellowstone we had driven the motorhome up from Salt Lake City and parked it in the West Yellowstone KOA. We had dragged our little Ford Aspire behind it so we had something to drive through the park with. One thing about our little car, well, it was little. Sitting in an animal jam I got to see just how little it truly was as I watched a buffalo come up next to us on the road. He stood there eyeing us with one big brown eye, his shaggy coat littered with grass and dust. I wondered if he would consider Blue Thunder (of course we had to name the little car) a threat to his masculinity. Well, he did not and kept moving along the side of the road. This animal jam was a doozy and as usual it was caused by buffalo. In the narrow, winding road that leads North from Madison Junction to Norris Geyser Basin the buffalo cannot do anything but walk down the road. Well, they mosey, as buffalo tend to do out here in the west and sometimes they will have a stand off. I have seen buffalo fight during the rut, quite the spectacle but this time it was a stand off between a buffalo and a small, white car. The buffalo and car were nose to nose in the roadway and that was the jam. As we creeped by I watched the driver gesturing to his wife, hands thrown in the air as if to say, "What? Where do you want me to go!" I wanted to tell the guy, dude the buffalo will win. I never found out who won that standoff but I am sure a ranger came by and took pity on the poor, fragile car and shuffled the buffalo off.
Next year, Yellowstone for sure. I need to sit among the lodgepole pines and meditate. I need to stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and contemplate what a small creature I truly am in the face of Mother Nature.