Breakfast is finished, trail mix and Clif bars are packed for lunch, Camelbak bladders are filled, and then I notice one of Caroline’s snowshoes is broken. The ski shop for Old Faithful Snow Lodge is around the corner and down the hall from the lobby. Without a hint of trouble, the girl at the window trades our rental snowshoes from Mammoth with a pair from her inventory. Our ski drop, this is what it is called even though we are going snowshoeing, leaves the hotel at 9:00. At 9:30, after being dropped off next to the Kepler Cascades, the snowshoes are strapped on, jackets zipped up, and we are on the march.

Seven miles is the total trip distance we must snowshoe through snow and ice. The Lone Star Geyser Trail follows the Firehole River for much of our trek. Crunch, crunch, crunch, our snowshoes plod ahead, breaking the silence that, at times, is accompanied by the gentle sound of the babbling waters.

The sun is hiding out behind clouds; then again, the wind is also at bay, and we are comfortable on our long walk. Not too far along, we spot a Canadian goose treading water, and he has company; a male and a female hooded merganser duck are swimming to and fro.

Ducks and geese are easy to get along with; they stay in the water, and we stay on the trail – simple.

Not so simple to deal with: along the trail, we see a spot where a herd of bison appears to have been hanging out. Turns out that it is a lone male bison who is not a very good housekeeper and has a healthy bowel, giving the impression that a small group lived in this riverside pasture. Lucky for us, he is not to be seen until we round the corner. Now you know why we came to know it was a single him. Caroline is nearly ready to turn back, but I assure her that this little bison is a good 130 feet away; 75 feet is the minimum suggested distance. We pass him while he busies himself, rooting grasses out of the deep snow. We couldn’t help but pause and watch him use his head as a plow, swinging it from side to side to push snow out of his way and revealing sweet morsels below.

By noon, we are upon Lone Star Geyser, and imagine there is no chance we should be so fortunate to have this geyser erupt during the short window we’ll be present. After all, this geyser erupts every three hours, and we were fairly certain that we had seen what must have been the steam cloud from an eruption at 11:00. Wrong. At 12:10, Lone Star begins erupting. For twenty minutes, the geyser puts on a show for our personal enjoyment and total disbelief that this is actually happening.

By 12:38, we were certain the spectacle was over, and with a four-and-a-half-mile hike back to Old Faithful Snow Lodge, we beat feet and got along down the trail.

On our way back, we saw Mr. Bison again, except this time he was napping under a tree in shallow snow. He seemed as tranquil as a full bison might actually become in appearance to two nervous snowshoers trying to look calm as they snuck by.

While from Buffalo, I did not mean to imply I was the beast napping under a tree. On the contrary, I’m the rainbow ice-cream-headed two-legged scaredy cat from the desert.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, we crunched to where the trail began and then crunched on over to Kepler Cascades for a peek and a toast of hot tea from the thermos before once again going crunch, crunch, crunch back to the Snow Lodge.

The Kepler Cut-Off trail next to the road was narrow and not groomed, making me prone to stumbling, so we re-joined the road and crunched our snowshoes all the way back to the hotel and our cabin.

After seven hours and seven miles, we were walking directly into the dining room to replenish our tired bodies. Oh, how we wished the Snow Lodge had jacuzzis as they do up at Mammoth Hot Springs.