Yellowstone, Part Three.

And this post is devoted to stupid people. 

Why?

Because they are not only out there, but we were privileged to see these stupid people, not once, not twice but three separate times.  Keep in mind that we were there for four days and one of those times it was a good 50 or so people being stupid at once!

The first really stupid sighting was during a drive in Mammoth.  There is a lovely one way drive that goes for quite some time.  It's really fun, very pretty and reminded me of the old time car rides, where there's a rail to keep the car on the tracks there were so many up and down hills and curves.  We thoroughly enjoyed it! 

Now when they say one way, they meant it.  There was maybe a foot on either side of the suburban.  It was seriously one lane only.  We saw the exit and it had the usual ONE WAY, signs along with DO NOT ENTER, on both sides of the exit.  You know the ones, red and white, huge lettering.  Very hard to ignore.

Yet, someone was able to, because as we rounded a curve, we spotted a car going the wrong way.  There wasn't enough room for our suburban to move over but we merged next to a little parking spot where you could get out and walk and there we managed to pass each other.  The driver was Asian and I seriously wondered if he didn't read English very well because I don't know how you could miss the signs at the exit.  If he couldn't understand the gist of the road signs, he shouldn't be driving!  One of those things, I'll never ever know.

Now this same drive, we saw stupid person number two.  We rounded through Mammoth, driving back to our campsite via a gorgeous canyon, that was truly breathtaking.  Now the road had two lanes but no shoulder on the lane next to the canyon and very little shoulder on the other side, but if you looked, you could find places to pull over.

So on this very narrow road, Bennington friends, think 7A narrow, we run into a traffic jam.  There are "mostly" cars on the side next to the canyon, so they're blocking that side, but on our side of the road is a car parked blocking half the lane.  Now Kent thought maybe he could squeeze through, unless the other side started moving, then a truck would be right where Kent was trying to pass and that wouldn't have ended well at all.

So we waited a good four minutes or so for somebody to come back to this car taking up half the lane.  And back they did come, with this gigantic tripod.  Obviously they had started this traffic mess.  Kent never honks but he honked at this guy and they guy swore at Kent.

Kent laughed at him because he was an obvious maroon. (Please note the Bugs Bunny reference.) As we drove a mere 25 feet down the road, there was a wider spot that our suburban could have fit onto and been completely off the road.  There was no reason to block traffic.

Stupid people number three happened on our way out of the park.  We passed, as a park ranger called it, an "animal jam".  Some elk in a field were passing the morning grazing.  Elk are big animals and if you ticked one off, it could at the very least trample you and at the most, kill you.  Not creatures you want to mess with, yet there were all these people dangerously close.  I took pictures from the car, so you can't see it to very well but here's a few shots of what it looked like driving by.







I wish I had a better shot showing how close some of these people were.  I mean, yes my daughter was twenty feet away from a coyote a few days before, but not because she walked close to it.  The animal ran out of the brush and in front of her and into the trees.  She sure as heck didn't follow it!

So, the moral as we taught our children, don't go the wrong way on one way roads, don't park in the middle of the street and don't approach animals bigger then your car!