Cold Sweats. Feverish Cold. Boiling River.

Bozeman, Montana to Yellowstone National Park to Jackson Hole, Wyoming: (This was to be our shortest day of the entire trip (3 hours), but somehow we managed to stay in the car for 7 hours..)

We left my uncle's house in Bozeman at about 9AM hoping to get a jump on the day, however, Keith, who had lost two cell phone chargers in the last 72 hours, had to stop by a Verizon Wireless store to buy another charger. The Verizon store happened to be located next to a cowboy/western clothing store, and so we were further delayed from hitting the road because Keith had been talking all week about how he wanted to buy one or all of the following items on his trip cross country: 1) Cowboy Boots (but cool, non-flamboyant ones..) 2) a leather jacket (but a cool, not flamboyant one..) 3) and assless chaps (flamboyant ones).

Keith left the store with a pair of grey Carharts.

We finally left Bozeman, and drove 45 minutes to the entrance of the Yellowstone National Park. (I, the entire time, wishing that Keith had purchased the knee high cowboy boots with the Indian nativity scene on them.. for personal amusement of course.) After trying to elude the $25 admission fee by saying we already paid for a national park entrance ticket at the Badlands, we paid our $25 and continued on our way.

Our first stop was the Boiling River, which was river of thermal hot water that converged with freezing cold water, producing a torture bath. I had been to this river about 11 years ago, and remember it being a lot bigger and more fun than it was this time around.

For illustrative purposes, and to better describe the Boiling River, imagine you gather 10 of your closest friends, and give five of them buckets of cold water and 5 of them buckets of boiling water, and then have them dump the buckets on you all at once.

Not at any point was I comfortable in the springs. If I wasn't screeching in agony from boiling water gushing over my back, I was screaming like a little girl because a jetstream of freezing cold water just engulfed the entire lower portion of my body. It was like someone punching me in the stomach, and then when I bent over to clench my stomach, they smacked me in the face. And this continued for the better part of 15 minutes.

Keith didn't go in the boiling river because he had a claw on his hand wrapping his surgically repaired ring finger. wimp.

Next Post: The rest of Yellowstone National Park to Jackson Hole, Wyoming

ps. A $25 National Park Fee is reasonable to pay. What is NOT reasonable to pay is $25 just to drive the length of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Or $15 to drive through Ohio. As soon as we hit Wisconsin, we didn't pay a single toll until the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. This covers approximately 2/3 of the U.S. From Maine until we got through Chicago (1/3 of the U.S.), I paid over $60 in tolls, and the roads were worse.

pps. Best roads in the country: Nevada.