Exploring a National Park - II. The Inception of a Plan

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It had all started three weeks back when I and Soura had vigorously concluded that we should do a trip to a place of natural beauty. The July 4^th long weekend was close and I convinced him that we should visit Yellowstone National Park. Due to the short notice of our plans, we couldn’t rope in other friends. We had precious little time for planning, but did a good job at it; we learnt about the major sites of the park that all tourists visited and also the uncommon attractions that only the more adventurous ventured into. We wanted to hike a lot and Yellowstone seemed to be the perfect place.

Yellowstone National Park, America’s first national park, is mostly located in Wyoming but also spreads across Idaho and Montana. Salt Lake City (SLC), Utah is the closest major airport to Yellowstone, about 371 miles away from it. We had booked our flights from our respective locations; Soura from Boston and I from Newark, such that we would both reach SLC on the night of Wednesday, July 2^nd. We had rented a car from the airport and the plan was to drive for three and a half hours to a small town called Idaho Falls, where we had booked a motel for the night. We would catch a few hours of sleep, wake up early the next morning and drive another two and half hours to reach Yellowstone via its West Entrance. We would stay there for two more days and drive back to SLC on Saturday night. Our returning flights were on Sunday morning. Three days aren’t enough to cover the entire Park but we would do the best we could.

At the very inception, our plans were disrupted. My flight which was scheduled to depart at 6PM on July 2^nd, was cancelled and I was put in a flight, the next day morning. I’ll omit the details of the tedious events that took place in between as it would be even more tedious for the reader. Sufficient to say that when I finally reached SLC at about 10:30 AM on July 3rd; I was in considerable ill-humor at having lost almost half a day, in a tightly packed schedule. Soura, who picked me up from the airport was more cheerful though. As I jumped into the car and we sped across I-15, I slowly regained my good spirits. We were driving straight to Yellowstone. Never mind what we would have to miss; we were determined to explore thoroughly whatever we would get to see.

Continued