Y: Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park.  It feels like I've been there - I've heard a lot about it and seen a lot of photo and video footage - but I haven't.  And I want to go.  Our National Parks are such a treasure and I really want to take advantage of them.  For all that I've seen pictures of Old Faithful and such, I'd really like to see it in person.  And I can't get enough of natural beauty and wildlife.

I read a novel recently that used as its backdrop the last round of huge fires that tore through Yellowstone (I think in the 1990s?)  It made me wish I'd been there before, so I could go again and see what effect the fire had on the ecosystems.  I'm pretty fascinated by that sort of thing.  I remember seeing a lot of footage of the Mount St. Helens area before the eruption and of the eruption and aftermath itself, and then I visited the area about ten years later and was fascinated by the moonscape appearance even then - when you looked at it from a distance, it was just gray looking and dusty with weird patterns (like the dead trees, all laying where they fell in the blast, buried under ash).  But when you walked around and actually looked at the ground more closely, there was all kinds of regrowth and even flowers.  I'm hoping to go back again the next time we're in the Pacific Northwest, to see what change the last ten years have brought.