Fulfilling a Childhood Dream with a Trip to Yellowstone National Park

While today's elementary school students enjoy high-definition video projectors, when I was in sixth grade it was a big deal when our teacher checked out the school's film strip projector.

During our geography lesson one day, Yellowstone National Park was set to be the topic. The kid in charge of the audio-visual equipment fed the film strip into the projector. We closed the curtains and turned out the lights.

Suddenly the screen glowed with images of thermal pools that radiated shades of blue unlike anything I had ever seen in my box of Crayola Crayons. I knew I had to see those for myself someday.

I put the first item on my bucket list decades before I even knew what a bucket list was.

It took about 40 years, but one summer when my wife and I were both working as school teachers, we carved out a few weeks to go on an extended cross-country camping trip.

Yellowstone was one of our first stops.

After a couple of days of driving from California and two nights spent camping at the foot of the Grand Tetons, we pulled into Yellowstone. Hint: If you're going to visit several national parks, pop for the annual pass, you'll save money.

It was early in the season, so I didn't think finding a campsite would be a problem. Wrong. Methodically we drove from the south to the north checking every campground. None were available. We spent the first night in a motel room outside the park.

The next day we found a campsite and started making the rounds. At the top of my list was the West Thumb Geyser Basin, which is where the thermal pools that transfixed me in sixth grade are located.

The colors are as shockingly beautiful today as they were on that ancient film strip.

We drove the big loop around the park, stopping for herds of bison to cross the road on more than one occasion.

Often cars would be stopped for no apparent reason. We stopped too, and got out to see what all the fuss was about. We found elk and moose resting not far off the road.

Of course, Yellowstone is well known for its healthy bear population. The warnings put the fear in us and before we headed out on a fairly long hike one afternoon, we rigged ourselves up with little bells. These are supposed to scare the bears away, but I always had the nagging suspicion that for smart bears they would act more like a homing signal.

Part of our hike--the part where we were lost--took us through a stand of grass that was well over our heads. A scene from "Jurassic Park" shot through my mind and I envisioned bears closing in on us from all angles.

We made it safely and spent more time exploring some short back country trails, along with all the other picture postcard highlights.

After a few nights we headed out with the promise to return. My return trip to Yellowstone didn't take another 40 years.

I was back in three.