Goodbye to Yellowstone

All good things must come to an end. Like our stay in Yellowstone. To be honest though, after a point we found ourselves comparing each new view and each new natural manifestation. That lake is bigger; this view is not as good as the other; no, this is just a squirrel, I want to see a coyote now; and so on. Quite judgmental of nature, as S put it, and unnecessarily so. In fact it reminded us of the time that, having driven along the interstate highway US-1 along the Pacific coast for miles and miles, enjoying the views of the mountains by the sea (and in my case, hoping not to fly away in the rogue winds), we found our minds wandering and our eyes seemingly telling our minds, 'Yes yes, we've seen this over and over again. Move along now. What's new?'

But I digress. The point is, it was time to leave Yellowstone. We'd seen and heard of native American settlements in and around the Yellowstone area, and thought of looking for some souvenirs. We ended up roaming around West Yellowstone, picking up a few things here and there, before leaving. 

The road back was the same as the way onwards, up to Idaho Falls in Boise. There onwards, the way diverged, towards Boise. 

The route to Boise passed through the Craters of the Moon National Preserve. The name sounds a lot fancier than the place looks! What it actually is, is a preserve of basalt and lava. I took a picture, thinking to myself that it looked just like black mud.

 

We then drove through almost deserted roads, in weather that made us feel more like we were in Hyderabad, than like where we were. When we finally reached Boise later in the evening, the temperature was nearly 40 degrees Celsius. 

We initially did plan to do some sightseeing in Boise, especially in the downtown area. It was just too hot though, and we instead decided to indulge ourselves by eating some Indian food - it had been a week since we'd eaten rice! Besides, one of the things Idaho is most famous for is potatoes. We ate some potatoes in our dinner, and had hash browns at breakfast the next day as well. 

Incidentally, it's been a week since I had tea. :) I am missing my masala chai fix, but managing reasonably well despite that - or so I would think.