Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play. Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day . . . this song was written in 1873, yet it's still true today, some 137 years later. And I couldn't get it out of my head as we were driving toward the Jackson Hole airport, ending our vacation yesterday at Yellowstone National Park.
I said goodbye to Old Faithful Inn and my heart felt really heavy. All my surroundings were so familiar to me, it felt like home. Although it was only a week, I recalled how I felt when I first stepped into the lodge: the wonder, amazement and anticipation of an adventure. I wasn't disappointed. This trip was truly exceptional, and I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to get away from the world and back to nature. To reconnect with yourself. That's what our national parks give us.
The photos on this page are from my husband's camera. The first photo above is, of course, a chipmunk. Unlike the red squirrels who were seriously down to business, running across the hiking path to grab a nut and scurrying back again to bury it, the chipmunks were playful, like they had all the time in the world before winter arrives.
The second photo is of an elk standing guard of his herd on the lawn of the Albright Visitor Center and Museum in Mammoth Hot Springs. The third is a pronghorn we discovered off the Old Gardiner Road in Montana, just above the north entrance to the park, and the last photo is the Grand Prismatic Spring, shot from a hill high above the Fairy Falls hiking trail.
Photos: Adam Weintraub
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