Watch a video of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National ParksGone are those idyllic days of stealing pic-a-nic baskets and dodging Ranger Smith.
Today, Yogi Bear’s Jellystone is more of a corporate experience, replete with an army of Ranger Smiths bent on keeping visitors safe from themselves.
It’s also a piece of America that is scenic and still a little bit wild.
And so it was with a mixed image - part cartoon rivers, trees, canyons and the family car loaded to the air vents with gear, and part postcard images of animals, geysers and sunsets - that we set out with our best friends since grade school for that iconic, once-in-a-lifetime vacation.
But two hours into the trip, smoke pouring out the rear end of the truck hauling our camper trailer threatened to dispel those expectations.
“Stuck in Butte and don’t want to be here?” an automotive repair manager at a Butte Chevy dealer asked us.
During a four-hour layover at the local Wal-Mart, we contemplated the worst-case scenarios and played Guitar Hero while the kids ate ice cream and caromed off each other like billiard balls.
When we got back to the dealership, the news seemed surreal on a beautiful Monday morning, the beginning of our big vacation.
“You blew out your rear end,” the repair manager told us. “I can get parts, but it won’t be done until Wednesday or Thursday.”
My friend, who was driving the ill-fated camper, looked at me and said, “Is this worse than our worst-case scenario?”
Much worse. But it turns out we’re much more optimistic than we ever thought.
And apparently that’s what allowed us to keep going, undaunted by mere automotive trouble.
We loaded a rental truck with a camper-full of equipment, food, bedding and cooking supplies in a Butte thundershower.
Our arrival in Yellowstone - and our attempt to set up camp - did not come until midnight.
Too soon, the morning sun poured into our tents like a squirt of pepper spray straight to the eyes. And with the morning came the first of at least eight daily warnings about grizzly bears and the need to keep our camp clean.
At first, the warnings were given with a wink, as if to say: “We know you’ll follow the rules. We’re just doing our jobs.”
But they became more emphatic, as if the rangers wiretapped the bears and found out they were conspiring to strike our twin tents.
It was camping under a threat level of orange.
Sadly, the warnings are not only necessary in content, they are necessary in number, too. A young child was scalded a few days before we arrived when he stepped off one of the well-marked pathways. Every year, one or more tourists - sometimes adults, sometimes children - are injured, or killed, when they get too close to wild animals that know nothing of “photo ops.”
And so agents of Xanterra, the concessionnaires who run Yellowstone, would periodically sweep through our campground to remove soiled paper plates or any item found to be attractive to bears.
Reports of up to six grizzlies at our own Grant Village campground gave us ample fodder for bedtime stories and good incentive for our kids to stay within eyesight.
Water bottles, cardboard boxes, ChapStick, anything with a residue or smell had to be put away when we left camp.
Once, I was chewed out for leaving a cooler out during a random inspection.
Never mind that I’d just stepped into our tent momentarily to put my daughter down for a nap.
Circumstances, more than anything, affect how your camping trip to Yellowstone will turn out.
With our camper broken down, we were forced to fit a week’s worth of food into a canopyless pickup truck.
And so every morning, after fresh bear warnings, we’d pack our food, our dirty laundry, our hot dog sticks, our pots and pans, our coolers, our toys, our paper plates, our towels, our entire lives into our two vehicles.
Our camping spots looked pristine as we prepared for the morning inspection, but the exhaustive schedule took its toll.
Four adults met each day with weakened resolve until it became easier to just stay in camp, or take turns tooling around the park rather than packing up again.
Land yachts surrounded our humble tent village, their cupboards full to bursting with food that would never color the air with its odor.
And even though the bear warnings seemed a little over-the-top, we’re grateful that our little ones returned unharmed, unmauled and unscalded.
And to balance the overbearing warnings (pun intended), viewing Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks so close to nature that you can smell it is worth the price.
The joy a child expresses at something so naturally phenomenal as a geyser bubbling and splashing to life, or the awesomeness of a 1,500-pound bison standing only a few feet off the road, is spiritual.
Their amazement at bears frolicking in a field of wildflowers is soothing to parents who wonder whether they can separate reality from their video games.
No cages, no made-up flora and fauna and no scheduled feeding times is the greatest way to experience the beautiful wildness that is still available outside the confines of a television, magazine or newspaper.
With more water in the park this year because of abundant snowfall, Yellowstone Lake rose above its normal shorelines and lapped at the forest edges.
Normally this might be a problem, but for parents with children who wanted nothing more from Yellowstone than to swim in its waters, the gentle sloping shorelines covered in eight inches of water and warmed by a July sun made a delightful play area - as opposed to the deeper, 41-degree water where the lake normally meets the land.
We did not, as so many people do, try to see everything Yellowstone had to offer. For every day spent driving and fighting crowds at all the usual stops; Old Faithful, Steamboat, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, we took one day to relax and let the kids be kids.
We relived each day around our campfire, eating s’mores and planning whether to drive to see Mammoth Hot Springs or just sit with our feet in the lake.
The more dedicated of the children became junior rangers, while the others just carried around green papers identifying all the animals in the park.
“Dad, I want to see a Columbian ground squirrel,” my middle son told me.
“What about a grizzly bear?” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather see that?”
“Yes,” he said. “That would be cool, too, but I really want to see a Columbian ground squirrel.”
Maybe it’s because they have fewer expectations than adults, but children seem to find the joy in almost any experience.
Perhaps it isn’t that they see life like a cartoon, but that life hasn’t taken on its starker, more complex attributes yet.
At any rate, they taught us a lot about how to see life on this trip.
Yellowstone National Park, for all its resemblance to Jellystone or the great theme parks of the world, with its boardwalks and warning signs, its throngs of people and its summertime magnetism, still is one of the greatest natural experiences available today.
The children’s memories do not include repacking four coolers every morning and scrubbing the pic-a-nic table daily.
Instead, they talk about how tall the geysers were, how much the bison weighed, how big the grizzlies looked from so far away and how much fun they had in such a wonderful place.
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