cancer – day 799

I woke up early (like 5AM or something) and I got out on the road right away. I’d already been through most of the Black Hills, and I’m coming back this way plus I’ve been here many times before, so I just got back out on the road and headed west.

As I looked at the map, I saw how close my route was going to go past Yellowstone National Forest, and on something of a whim I decided to go through Yellowstone instead of around it.

Uff da, not the wisest decision. Narrow winding roads, slow speed limit, and then it got dark. So here I am halfway through Yellowstone and it’s like 10PM. I decided to go on ahead past Old Faithful and try to get to the east of Yellowstone before calling it a night.

But then I couldn’t resist, and when I came to the turnoff for Old Faithful, I had to take it. So now it’s like after midnight, and here I am driving up to Old Faithful. Which is silly because it doesn’t spout during the night because it’s cold out. But when I got up to the main parking lot, I saw just one vehicle there, a truck with a 5th wheel camper. So I decided to just park the damn RV and get a few hours sleep. I found a dark space near the side where there weren’t any buildings and I was sheltered from the parking lot lights by a small clump of trees. It’s after 1AM and I’m having a hard time getting sleepy. I’m thinking Yellowstone was not a good choice of re-route. Tons of extra miles, slow miles, to see hundreds of acres of burned out forest. Man that’s depressing. I see a burned out forest and I feel guilty because of all the damage we do to nature. I have yet to hear about a forest fire that was NOT caused by a human being.