It’s barely daybreak at 5:50 in the morning, but we know the value of every minute today. We must look forward to tomorrow when we need to get home. This plays a large role in how long we get to spend in Yellowstone, as we need to position ourselves tonight in a place where we can drive home tomorrow. At the moment, we are about 1,000 miles from home, and while consideration for those parameters is under consideration, we will do our best to remain in the moment and yet aware of the time.

As I said, we were entering the park shortly after daybreak. Sunrise was right here at the Canary Springs on the terrace near where we dropped in last night for sunset. The boardwalk trail we had walked a few years earlier has been subsumed and is now impassable as it is disappearing below the limestone crust.

In some areas, the color of the travertine has faded, and it seems the water is flowing in new areas, while in others, it has stopped. I think it was during our last visit we started learning about the hydrology of the ground below us and how the combination of a heat source close to the surface combined with an ample water supply to cook up a soup of minerals whose flow keeps shifting while the minerals that make up the travertine accumulate and also change the shape and openings of the natural pipes below. Depending on snowfall, rain, and earth movement caused by earthquakes it very well may be that the features of Yellowstone not only change from year to year but from season to season.

We’d like to stop everywhere that looks familiar to get off the road and explore further than we have on previous visits, but with about 10 hours allocated for this part of the adventure instead of 3 to 5 days, we have to limit ourselves.

So, you think this looks the same as it did so many years ago? Do the trees look taller, and can you tell how the forest is recovering from the fire of 1988? Come to think of it, when we were first here it was the beginning of the season in springtime when we visited with Ruby and Axel and then at the close of the season during the fall with my mother-in-law Jutta. Here, at the height of summer, I’d venture to say that the greens are greener and the blues bluer.

To say we are excited to see all of this again should be obvious; what is not so obvious is our surprise at how amazing it all is. There are times we wonder if we’ll enjoy a place on subsequent visits as much as we did on our first or second stop, but seemingly without fail, we are as delighted as we were the first time. Matter of fact our familiarity starts to feel as though we are visiting an old friend who is happy to greet us.

Someday I hope to have all of these photos sorted algorithmically by visual data so I might learn better what exactly it is in these images that is common and if there’s a theme that I cannot see on glancing over them. Then I have to wonder about a man by himself looking into this cauldron of boiling water and steam: what is he seeing and experiencing? I get to squeeze Caroline’s hand and constantly reiterate how amazed I am, and she does the same back at me, but he doesn’t have anyone to share the experience being had at the moment. I can’t say one way or the other is more or less valid, but I do know that with the two of us sharing these days, we have each other to help fill the memory gaps that time and distance create.

I should probably check my older photos, but I do think that there was a lot more steam obscuring the view of Excelsior Crater here at Midway Geyser Basin on our previous visits.

Looking at Grand Prismatic, it became certain that the view is a lot clearer today. Funny, but it seems like the hillside behind this hot spring is taking forever to start recovering from the fire. I hope we have yet another opportunity in the future to come back to Yellowstone and once again measure where things are in this national treasure.

From where heads are pointed, it would seem that only the view of the Grand Prismatic behind me and the Excelsior Crater in front of me were worth taking in, meaning that this view in between feels neglected. Nothing should be passed by in Yellowstone, and one should always remember that Old Faithful is not the only thing to see on a visit to America’s first national park.

The look of rust has more to do with the temperature and chemical composition of these bacterial mats that fan out and away from hot springs and geyser pools.

We look into the earth in awe.

For mere moments, we can glimpse a moment in history that has stood mostly still. Evolutionary forces may always be at work, but from our perspective, these things have always been this way, and a kind of timelessness is found.

The day is not just screaming by. Maybe it’s the familiarity with the place and that we are not trying to commit every detail into our memories but are refreshing things that are back in there somewhere.

The wonderful Old Faithful Inn looks as beautiful and majestic as always. With the bus out front, it’s almost difficult to witness the passage of time, and it feels like it could just as easily be 1955. I hope to never forget that it was the center-gabled roof above the patio that was the room we stayed in on our first visit to this historic hotel.

To stay here just one more time, that would be nice.

We’d been a little nervous about visiting Yellowstone at the height of tourism season out of fear of the large crowds we’d read and heard about, but being here on the Upper Geyser Basin a couple of days after the Fourth of July, things seem pretty calm and uncrowded to us.

Hello, old friends; we are back.

There was no way we could be in the area and not walk from the Old Faithful Inn across the Upper Geyser Basin up to Morning Glory Pool. Along the way, we got to see Riverside Geyser spouting off.

We couldn’t have asked for more dramatic skies.

The astute among you might recognize that we are on our way back to the Old Faithful area.

The Fishing Cone at West Thumb Geyser Basin is well underwater today; this is our first time seeing it so.

Fractal chaos at its best.

Don’t think I’ll ever be able to take a more iconic photo in Yellowstone, as this one has snow-capped mountains, a lake, blue skies, mom, dad, kid, a hot spring, and a boardwalk.

Already heading back to the car as our time in Yellowstone must come to an end on this short visit.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a few minutes to spare on our way through the Grand Teton National Park.

We are at the Oxbow Bend of the Snake River with Caroline, commemorating the moment with a walk into the waters. It’s already 6:00 p.m. as we leave the Tetons.

These summer days up north are deceiving due to their length. It’s still unbelievable that we’ll pull over in Green River, Wyoming, in a couple of hours and call it quits on the day so we can get a proper night of sleep. Tomorrow is the long haul home, and we are certainly accumulating a sleep deficit. Our original plans had us driving to Salt Lake City tonight, but after weighing the options and verifying the miles on our map, we decided on the detour. The Flaming Gorge Motel was a bargain at $38 for the night and is also a clue as to why we are detouring.