Unlike yesterday, today started early. Too early. It was like I'd never even closed my eyes before they'd opened again, squinting into the light of my cell phone screen to see 3:10 AM staring back at me, willing the clock to go back a few hours so I could wake up feeling more alive. For once, I'd just like to get through one whole day without being tired, but unfortunately, I am no longer 21, my body and life don't work that way. So, anyway, here I was, really questioning in my head if I could just let my entire family go to Yellowstone without me so that I could go back to sleep, when I heard Meagan, Chris, and Steph beginning to stir in their rooms around us. There's nothing like some good ole peer pressure to get you going in the morning. I wasn't happy about it, but I forced myself up and off of the mattress, cursed Jarren for still getting to sleep beside me with the tenacity of a tranquilized zoo animal, then begrudgingly walked myself to the bathroom to start getting ready.

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I can't really tell you how I managed to do it, but I did it: I got ready on time. The details were foggy, but I know for sure that I did not put any makeup on this morning and somehow progressed to fully awake by the time I buckled my seat belt in my dad's rental car. Meagan quietly tucked herself into the seat behind me and I turned on some Morgan Wallen on the lowest volume possible as Jarren pulled out of the driveway.

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On our drive over to my family's Airbnb, there is light chatter about who-remembers-what in the car, I think mainly to keep us engaged and awake. When we get to a light and Chris makes a different turn than Jarren does, we silently turn it into a race to see which car could get there first. 10 minutes later, we beat Chris there and pull into the driveway behind Kyle's rental car. I hop out of the car to let my family know we're here and ready to go while Jarren and Meagan sit back and wait. I walk down the stairs to the basement entrance at the back of the house and ring the doorbell. When I receive no answer, I loudly knock on the door, just shy of a bang. My dad opens the door flustered, very on brand for him, I must say, so I didn't think anything of it until I walk inside and see that literally no one is ready. You know how teenagers today use the word "literally" for emphasis, but not for it's actual meaning? Well here, I literally mean literally. No one was ready. Some people were just waking up. To say I was fuming after the conversation I'd had with them last night was a severe understatement. I had to wake up at the ass crack of basically midnight after getting barely any sleep and I come here on time and no one here had the courtesy to be on time? When they had more time to get ready than we did? I was livid. "Why is no one ready? Do you guys know what time it is?" I ask, fuming. "There's only one bathroom," everyone chimes. Oh my God, even writing this now, it still irks me. "I told you guys last night that we absolutely had to leave at 4 today. I made it so clear to you guys!" I said. Everyone knew what was coming from me. Everyone has their faults, mine happens to be that I may be way too direct with people I love. My family are no exceptions to the "people I love" rule, so I'm sure everyone here was none too surprised with how annoyed I was with them this morning. Everyone began rushing and apologizing. I could hear how mean I sounded and was trying to tone myself down, but it ended up feeling like a wasted effort on my part because I'd already put them through the shit end of it. I felt a little bad for bullying everyone into rushing, but at the same time, at least they were finally getting ready. 40 minutes later, they were all ready and out the door.

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We split up to fill the cars as best as we could: my parents in my car, my Aunt Rose with Steph and Chris, and Laura's family all in their car. We began driving, us following Chris and Kyle following us. We made pulled over just before Red Lodge to add Brit & Dakota to our line, then we were on the road again. It wasn't too long after that before Meagan and my mom had completely knocked out. When we got near the beginning of the climb up the Beartooth Pass, they both woke up, which was perfect timing because we were about to ascend on the first scenic part of our drive. 

We steadily ascended to a lookout, then proceeded to get out of the car to look around. After stepping out and getting fully immersed in literal freezing cold blasts of air, we took in the scenery and I looked on as my mom marveled at the heights despite how obviously cold she was. Meagan could not get past the cold, and my dad disappeared to the bathroom, so Jarren and I decided to walk down to the overlook. We get halfway through when all of a sudden, I hear huffing and see a mountain goat blocking our way. I stop dead in my tracks, not out of fear (even though I probably should've been wary considering how close we were), but out of pure excitement. I whisper-shout over to Jarren, who is looking out in another direction, for him to look in front of us. When our gazes return back to the goat, it's still staring right back at us but begins stomping it's leg at us as it huffs. We back up to give it some space, and it jumps over the guard rail and onto the rocks on the mountainside, still staring at us. We back up a little further as Meagan walks up on us. We whisper-shout over to her to come look at the goat, but it takes off running down the mountainside as she approaches. The drop down the side is not only super jagged, but also steep, and this goat makes it seem like no work at all to sprint away from us. Jarren and I both can't get over it. We walk back to the group and tell them all about what we saw, passing around video evidence to go with the story. When everyone decided they couldn't stand not feeling their fingers anymore, we packed back into our cars and filed out to drive the rest of the Pass.

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As we climbed in altitude, the guardrail protecting us from a steep, instant death slowly tapered out and the road felt as if it was beginning to narrow. My heart raced in my chest as we wound our way up the Pass, but then mercifully, the road began to widen again. Snow flanked the sides of the road as we emerged on the mountaintop and saw small dots in the distance. "I think those are goats," Jarren said, squinting over at the dots. As we got closer, we saw that he was right, it was a whole herd of mountain goats just hanging out. Chris, who was in front of us, drove on, but Jarren slowed almost to a stop so that we could all get a chance to marvel at them. We thought Chris would stop, but he didn't, so we began to follow him fully again, but he pulled over on a higher part of the road. Jarren and Dakota got out of the cars to tell Chris what we'd all seen, then we made a u-turn to go back and see them again. Jarren got out of the car with his camera, as did my parents. I remembered how cold it was earlier, so I decided to hang back in the car with Meagan to keep warm. A few minutes later, they returned, and we were off again.

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Not too long later, we emerged into Cooke City, a small town that felt like something out of an old-timey movie. Chris pulled into a parking space, so we all followed, and he came over to share that this would be the last time we would meet an actual bathroom for a while, so he was making a mandatory pit stop. We mulled around for a bit and then walked over to a coffee shop, Cooke City Coffee, to get our morning fix as none of us had eaten anything yet today. We entered and placed our breakfast and coffee orders and stepped aside into the book store at the back of the cafe to wait for our orders to be fulfilled. As we waited around, I pulled my cousins aside and apologized for bullying them this morning. Laura said, yes, I was really mean, but she understood and that it was ok. We hugged and moved on. When my huckleberry latte (of course) was handed off to me, and everyone around us was good to go, we headed back to the cars and were off once more.

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A few hours and some pit stops to look at the scenery later, we finally arrived at the Yellowstone entrance. We parked and went over to take photos with the sign and were met with a group of New Yorkers from Bayside who were waiting to take photos after us. Small world. Once our photo op was over, we all piled into the cars again and drove into the park.

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This entry would take absolutely forever if I were to recount to you all of our initial sightings of buffalo, (extremely) near and far, so I'll just condense it into this: there is absolutely no shortage of buffalo in Yellowstone. Every buffalo in the world might as well be in Wyoming, that's how many are out there. They seem to be incredibly accustomed to people, but please, don't try to pet the humpback cows, they're not our friends. I shouldn't need to say that, but some people are just... so dense.  Anyway, on our drive to and from different areas of the park, we also spotted a black bear, which held up traffic because a driver stopped in the middle of the road to sit and stare at it (again, dense), and some antelope.

If you know me, you know that my absolute favorite animals on this entire planet are pigs. I am so very obsessed with them and hope to own my own micro-pig one day. A very close second to pigs are grizzly bears. I know they're not our friends and they're big danger teddies, but I think they're so fascinating and for the past few years, have been desperate to see one outside of a zoo. I don't want to just see one though, I want to feel like my life is a little bit in danger (read: dense). I don't actually want to be risking my life by being like, 10 feet away, or anything, but I want to be close enough that I can see it's features without it seeing me, if that makes any sense. Part of the reason I went to Alaska was because it has the highest concentration of grizzlies in America, maybe even in the world. Unfortunately for me, though, every time there was a grizzly sighting in Denali, it was reported to the park rangers, which made the area get roped off and therefore made it even harder to see them. I was hoping I might be in luck today, though, because the second highest population of grizzlies in North America just so happens to be in Montana. Now, I know Wyoming and Montana are not the same state, but Yellowstone runs into Montana, so I was crossing my fingers.

A few hours into our trip, I got lucky, but not too lucky. We were driving down a main road when we saw around 4 cars pulled over. Instantly, we all knew something had to be up. We pulled over and got out of the car to figure out what we were supposed to be looking at. I walked over to an onlooker and asked him, as he has binoculars out. He shared that there was a grizzly sow and her three cubs in the field beyond us. As he was saying that, it came into view for me. They were far away, but I could spot the shape of them with just my eyes and no equipment. I marveled at them as the cubs ran around each other while mom lead the way, pausing to sniff around a tree, then sit down. At this point, Brittney had brought out binoculars for us to use, and when I slid the pair over my eyes, I watched the small orbs take full shape. I was so excited, I could hardly speak. The only thing that would've made this better would've been for the bears to be closer, but beggars can't be choosers. Jarren and I both couldn't believe that we'd gone all the way to Alaska to see a grizzly bear and ended up seeing one here instead. Even as an avid hunter and outdoorsman here in Montana/Wyo before he joined the Marine Corps, he'd never seen a grizzly in the wild. We were both honestly pretty giddy about it.

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We continued on for a few more sights, stopped to eat lunch, then continued onward. Around 2:00 PM (if my memory serves me right), we decided we'd head over to Old Faithful, figuring that we'd have enough time to drive over before the next eruption. We were quickly proven wrong when we got stuck in standstill roadwork traffic for what must've been a full 45 minutes. It was unreal. People were getting out of their cars and talking to other cars behind them, pulling out trunk beers, the full works. As we waited in the car cabin, my parents and Meagan drifted off to sleep, leaving Jarren and I awake. I'm normally not able to sleep in cars or planes, but even I was beginning to feel extremely exhausted and began to nod off. I don't know how Jarren held up in that traffic, but he did, and I commend him for it because I know he was beyond tired, too. We'd missed the latest eruption by the time the traffic cleared up, so we pulled into the parking lot and decided to peruse the gift shop until the next eruption around 45 minutes later. Jarren's brother, David, and his family, who drove up from Utah, as well as my Uncles Kenny and Ian, who drove from Canada, met us there and we all just hung out to kill time. Jarren and I grabbed some huckleberry beer and seltzer from the gift shop and a quaint little Yellowstone sticker to add to the Great Pink Suitcase once we returned back in Billings. We popped the trunk of the car open and dangled our feet out the back while we sipped on the beer and waited to walk over to Old Faithful.

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When it was time, we walked over, found a seat and waited for the eruption. While we waited, someone on the far end of the crowd started the wave, which was pretty fun. The eruption took longer than I expected and was way quieter than I thought it would be. I don't know why, but for some reason, I thought it would be this great, loud event, when in reality, it literally is just water shooting up from the ground. What I wasn't prepared for at all was how hot it was, which I could instantly feel as soon as it started erupting and steam started occurring. All in all, seeing Old Faithful erupt was an interesting experience and I'm glad I can say that I saw it happen, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it again. 

My dad and aunt decided to go with Kenny and Ian to find something to cook back at the cabin we would be staying at, so we parted ways and began to make our way over to the cabin without them. On the way there, we stopped to see some thermal pools and to take photos of a small herd of elk that Jarren and Meagan had spotted by chance as we were driving by, then we beelined to Idaho to get to the cabin.

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I was so relieved the second we stepped foot into the cabin, and was excited at the prospect of finally getting some rest, but the excitement quickly dissipated when I remembered that I'd wanted to see the night's sky here and that this was my only night to do so. The cabin wasn't necessarily remote, but at the very least was located a ways away from any real city lights as far as I could tell, and based on the photos on VRBO, seemed to have an incredible night's view. All of this added up to me trying to down as many Twisted Teas as possible in order to find the will to stay awake. A few hours of talking, drinking, and eating later, I sauntered onto the balcony into the crisp Idaho night to look up at the sky, and my heart just sunk. The sky blanketing me basically mimicked my regular night's sky in Pennsylvania. I was so disappointed, I could feel tears begin to swell and fought them back as hard as I could out of fear of appearing to be overdramatic. The neighboring cabins on the hill above us were blasting bright lights out from their porches. When I say bright, I mean like semi-truck level brights, with absolutely no apparent reason as to why. While I could faintly make out the shape of the Milky Way above me, the neighboring lights made it impossible to see much else. My spirit was absolutely crushed, and though Steph and Ian tried to make me feel better about it, I was just too sad and tired to recover. I walked myself back into the cabin, said goodnight to everyone, and gently made my way up to the loft where Jarren had already been fast asleep for around an hour. I tried to put the image of the sky out of my mind and drifted off to the sound of my family laughing in the kitchen below us.