NT: Bucket List destinations that turned out to be a meh

by KelleyCook , Sunday, July 24, 2016, 08:26 (3431 days ago)
edited by KelleyCook, Sunday, July 24, 2016, 09:04

Brought up because the wife & kids had one this week and we all followed it with another:

My family saw Mt. Rushmore while driving in. They don't let you get closer than a mile away (no hiking). It's basically a big museum touting itself along with gift shops galore. All of them hated it.

And after meeting up with them, I personally finally saw Old Faithful: Every hour a few thousand people circle a hole in the ground that squirts hot water up for a couple minutes. Again, they don't let you get closer than a football field length away and its not that impressive anyhow. Lots of traffic and a waste of my limited time.

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On the otherhand, there are many, many truly cool spots in Yellowstone: Driving within a morning bison migration, everything along Firehole Lake Road (which ironically we only went down because of Old Faithful traffic and were randomly rewarded with a close-up eruption of a truly cool geyser, White Dome), The terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs, swimming in the hot and cold river there, the canyon at Artist Point, the Virginia Cascade Drive that scared the crap out of me as it turned out to be a skitchy road without a guardrail on top of a ravine (kids of course of loved it) and for that matter just being inside a 45 mile wide still active caldera. Flying out of the teensy airport that was destroyed in "2012" was pretty cool too.

So leave Yellowstone on your bucket list, but skip Old Faithful. Also add in the Grand Tetons. Very Impressive and the people there are very laid back. I could easily live there.

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travel