Welcome back to the Great American Road Trip, Part II. I hope you enjoyed Part I. Here’s a link if you haven’t already checked it out.
Buckle up. Things get a little weird in Part II, and if you don’t like weird, you’ve been warned. We battle a Chinese tourist in Yellowstone and get stalked by a giant, hungry grizzly in the Grand Tetons. We have a plumbing emergency in Salt Lake, and we take on the House in Las Vegas. We go to the urban fringes, where the desert scrub hides ominous, missing high heels, where corpses decompose in trash bags behind vape shops, and where the whistles of pimps and prostitutes carry from passing SUVs.
Yellowstone
Is Yellowstone worth it?
While the crowds are manifold and expenses sky high, the landscape is perhaps the most stunning in not just our country but in the entire world. If you are a real contrarian, your best bet might be the Badlands. However, I will say that parts of Yellowstone are well worth the clutches of obnoxious foreigners who clog up the boardwalks, hotels, and gift stores.
Just driving through the enormous park is worth the time and effort. Pete and I sucked it up and witnessed the Old Faithful geyser amid a sea of tourists before hiking through some of the hot springs and settling on a campsite for the night.
A fate worse than death might be falling into one of Yellowstone’s scalding hot, acidic pools. They are beautiful to look at, with their bright, natural colors and patterns, but daunting nonetheless. The boardwalks that snake through these hot springs were certainly not built with flocks of Chinese tourists in mind. They were narrow and overloaded with people eager to get the perfect picture or selfie angle, and as you walked, you risked getting thrown overboard.
Nothing against the Chinese, but some of their tourists can act like absolute savages. Armed with their selfie sticks, some lack self-awareness, barging into you without acknowledgment.
Apologies were impossible: none spoke English. One elderly Chinese woman nearly pushed Pete and me straight off the boardwalk and into a hot spring. Moments later, an American mom lashed out at the Chinese woman for breaching park protocol and stepping off the boardwalk. Though most definitely a ‘Karen,’ she became my personal, unsung hero for the day.
In a less crowded area of the park, we learned there is an entire community of older folk obsessed with the smaller geysers that erupt more intermittently than Old Faithful. They communicate via walkie-talkies. They were a serious bunch, including some scientists who had waited years, perhaps decades, for certain geysers to erupt. It was just our luck that one of these rare geysers exploded as we were nearby. Panicked chatter erupted on the comms line: ‘It’s happening!’ A mad rush followed to see the geyser in action for the first time in years.
Pete also felt the wrath of an angry environmentalist who scolded him for tossing a stick into one of the hot springs. Littering is banned, but it was only a stick—a thing very much part of the natural landscape—not a wrapper or Gatorade bottle. The woman yelled at Pete, failing to realize, of course, that the very boardwalk she was standing on was a far worse pollutant and invasive element to the natural beauty of Yellowstone than a tossed stick.
Grand Tetons
A certain type of American doesn’t just love camping; they live for it. They work a 9-to-5 merely to pay the bills and acquire more gear. Gearheads would likely survive the zombie apocalypse if they weren’t so nice. Their RVs are more opulent than their homes. They forgo the NFL Red Zone package, preferring to spend weekends in a national park, building a campfire, rather than watching five football games at once.
Pete and I are no such campers, having survived Yellowstone with a cheap, Chinese-made Walmart tent. It was ill-suited to the Wyoming weather, which is freezing even in the summer. Our neighbors at the Grand Teton campsite, however, were hardcore. As we pitched our polyester nest, the man next door rested comfortably in a state-of-the-art camper. While we struggled to ignite damp kindling, fanning the weak flames with cardboard, the man next door strolled out, whipped out an industrial-grade blowtorch, and lit a pile of moist, moss-laden branches in seconds. Like stubborn cavemen, we envied his fire yet could not bring ourselves to ask for help.
Then it started to rain, and our fire turned into a smoldering, smoking mash of charcoal, twigs, and mud. I huddled inside the tent, trying to read The Call of the Wild by Jack London. It was a cold, raw night. June in the Rockies. Having some cell service, I checked WhatsApp to update my then-girlfriend, who was spending the summer with her family in Istanbul. Instead of giving her an update, I received a curt breakup text. Just like that, it was over. The tent roof began to leak.
But I maintain: there is no better time to get dumped than on a cross-country road trip with your lifelong friend. I had no time to wallow and ruminate. Nearby, a fellow camper screamed out to his wife, “Bear shit! Honey, there’s fresh bear shit over here!” His panicked screech must have echoed throughout the entire campground.