My Leonard piece earlier this week engendered a multi-day email back and forth with one of my longest tenured motorcycling brothers about the relative ranks of the roads, places, times, and peoples we’ve met over the years on the road together.

Those included many, many tens of thousands of miles, half dozen countries, 50+ national parks, turnpikes, uncountable dirt and gravel roads, mountain passes, deserts, bug-infested tropical sweat forests, swamps, marshes, rivers, oceans, lakes, twists, turns, ups-n-downs, and whoop-dee-do-es over several decades.

These exchanges caused me to reflect on the number one park attraction I’ve seen so far — Yellowstone.

How does one describe how you feel when you are inside this park among its beauty? Awed is too weak a word.

Seen elk grazing. Seen bear fishing. Seen buffalo cavorting with their young uns. Deer with attitudes towards us human bipedal pissants signaling we don’t belong there.

An ecosystem that’s soul-cleansing and re-energizing, not so much as in better than the rest if America’s national parks as they are all unique and amazing. But . . .

Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon, Gran Escalante, Yosemite, Redwoods, Mojave Desert, Everglades . . . Yellowstone’s an amazing sci-fi amalgam of wildlife, natural beauty, oddity, and other-worldly phenomena in an area larger than Rhode Island.

No appalling land waste devoted to good ole green wind farms or endless square miles simply packed to the gills with trees is present. No, it’s magical. Saw the fullest moon ever there since I sailed the Pacific Ocean during 70s onboard the USS Kitty Hawk. Stars exploded out of the sky and the full moon was bright enough to cast shadows.

I’d love to be there someday during the winter and walk around the Upper Geyser Basin with all the steam rising from the thermal features — a scene from a Tim Burton movie perhaps.

Maybe Am I just debating levels of perfection? Probably.

Hard to rank them, but my goal was and remains to see them all.

Like is Yellowstone even real?

Much in American daily life today is fake and made to look authentic. When you go to these parks, they’re so perfect and there are so many ridiculous things to see in all their main places and out of the way spaces, it’s hard to imagine it’s all real. There’s no off switch and all their stuff continues 24/7/365/day/night.

In closing, only one shot of Yellowstone will I share — that of the Grand Prismatic Spring:

Jehovah was on mescaline when he did this Yellowstone feature

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Editor’s Note: There is a birthday being celebrated here at Refuge Farm this morning. Another trip around our mighty sun achieved! The gang is infused with merriment and a happy luncheon off the property is planned, the F150 jammed on the road to town!

– Vic

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