This summer my wife surprised me with a special trip for two. This was not however, one of the cute romantic getaways that couples sometimes do with bubble baths and rose peddles; oh no, this was very different. She surprised me with a trip with my best friend Andy, who is currently living in Las Vegas while he goes to school to become a dentist. Dr. Andy and I were roommates my second year of school at Utah State and were insta-best friends (as in instant, not Instagram you social media crazed turkeys.) Anyways, Brandi’s original plan was to completely surprise me with this Best Friend Trip to San Francisco and I wasn’t going to find out until I got to the airport. However, it turns out that planning a trip for someone else is pretty challenging. Plus, she knew I would miss out on the trip planning high and pre-trip jitters. She was probably right, and I was thrilled when she told me! I quickly turned to my familiar friend Google and searched out important trip checklist items such as “Coolest places in San Fran nobody knows about,” “How to travel San Fran when you’re super cheap but in a cool Mr. Frugal Guy sort of way,”  and “Will I get stabbed when trying to ride the train in San Francisco?” The list goes on but basically when we started planning it all out, although it would’ve been a super activity packed and fun 3 day getaway, it was going to cost a(n) [insert funny “expensive” terminology phrase here.] While we still had the full support of our lovely wives, we agreed that is was a trip we would rather save to do when we could all be there together. So we brained stormed other, equally fun and cost-effective, trips.

 It was decided, that Andy DDS would fly to Idaho Falls for our best friend weekend. It would consist of hours at home, locked up in my favorite room, which I like to refer to as Ragan Cinema (aka our theater room.) We would watch movies, play video games, eat lots of pizza and candy, and drink too much mountain dew and energy drinks. Basically every high school boys’ dream. But we needed one more element to add to our adventure. Enter Yellowstone National Park.

We would make a dash to Yellowstone to see the geysers, sneak pass a “stay on the trail sign” and probably almost have to wrestle a grizzly bear. Real manly stuff. With no real plan and a pocket full of cash, Andy and I woke up on Friday morning and hit the road. It is pretty cool that we only live about 1.5-2 hours from such an incredible geological wonder and people come from all over the world to see it. When we got to the city of West Yellowstone, we stopped to check out a ropes course and ran into the nicest lady who showed us a map of the park and what we may want to stop and see if we had a full day. We didn’t really have a full day at this point as it was around 11 am but we did want to see all the things. Since it was closing in on “prime time” at the big dogs such as Old Faithful and the Grand Prismatic Spring, we decided to work our way “backwards” and end our day with these two spots. Without providing details of every stop we made (and ignoring all rules of English grammar) I’ll provide a quick rundown of our day. Ah hem.

Lots of driving with mild speeding, quick stops and bathroom breaks needing.
Running, photography, bison and bear, elk no moose, but we didn’t care.
Raining, stop raining, and starting again,
Walking, start running, and hungry as sin.
Seeing geysers and mud and fun color rocks,
We had rain on our heads and dirt in our socks.
The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was truly breathtaking,
The long way ’round the lake we ended up taking.

The last part of this story that needs elaborating on, and not in messy poetic form, is our Old Faithful experience. We got to Old Faithful at 8:10pm and the crowd had starting gathering for her next go around. It turns out that the nice forest rangers of Yellowstone, can actually time out this large, dare I say faithful, eruption of water and steam fairly accurately, and they post an estimate near the geyser itself.  The next eruption was set to go off at 8:45pm. We were quickly running out of light and we had yet to see those large, brightly-colored, hot springs that were so iconically “Yellowstone.” We had seconds to make the critical decision of staying put and ensuring our front row seat of watching this beautiful water volcano or running the risk of cramming a roughly 60+ minute round trip into 30 minutes to see the Grand Prismatic Spring at twilight and pray the geyser was feeling sluggish. Being the brave and adventurous lads we are, we ran back to the car and drove an appropriate speed to our colorful destination. Luckily I am typing this and not Andy, so you will not have to read whether we pulled off at the right location on our first try, or if someone pulled over too soon. This person may have thought that it would be better to see any colorful pots and Old Faithful then hold out for the big daddy and run out of light altogether. We aren’t going to talk about it. So after giving it “five more minutes,” 3 or 4 times to make it to the right spot, we did it. We made it to the Grand Prismatic Spring! And we had 10 minutes to make it back to Old Faithful! Needless to say, we ran like hell around those colorful pools. We snapped some quick pictures to prove to our friends and family we had made it, and then dashed back to the car for another responsible drive back to our final attraction. As we ran through the moonlit sky like our lives depended on it, we prayed we had defied all odds and made it back in time to see this natural wonder in action. We turned the corner, and there she was, in mostly all of her glory, puttering out at half-staff for the final 7 seconds of her wild run. We made it and all was good in the world.

Afterward, we got some famous ice cream, shopped the gift shop for matching best friend t-shirts, and explored the halls of the Old Faithful Lodge. It was now very dark and time to drive back to Idaho Falls. But we weren’t quite done. We had heard of large hot springs/warm rivers where the cool kids go swimming. We made the responsible decision to use our brights as we searched for our final stop for a midnight dip. Although we did walk around a few hot springs lit only by our headlights, we never found a “safe” spot to go swimming and our bodies remained nice and dry. We packed more in our half day then a bus full of eager tourist probably do in two. It was a day we won’t soon forgot.

If you made it the end of this post, I applaud you. Hopefully it wasn’t too exhausting to read. It is 3 am and it turns out I think I am funny and creative and a writer, when I should just be sleeping.