Yellowstone Backpacking (August 2021)

We arose and headed off early in the morning, heading west along I-90 to enter the park by the north gate.  The drive was easy, but
the countryside was covered in smoke from the California and Oregon fires.  The north entrance was bustling, but the wait was negligible,
and we stopped at Mammoth Springs as our first sight.  Richard had been to Yellowstone as a child (2010) and Drew had never been, so I
tried to hit the major attractions in our brief day of touring.

We also had to pick up some rental Bear Spray from Bear Aware while we were in the park.  So we did that, and hiked along the North Rim
of the Yellowstone Canyon while we were there.  Afterwards, we stopped by Old Faithful, and waited around for an eruption.  It was already 
quite late when that happened, and we unwisely shunned the hour-long waiuy at the lodge, and went to West Yellowstone, where our hotel was,
about an hour away.  There, we found all the restaurants had hour-long waits, and ended up checking into our hotel around midnight.  The
check-in was a fiasco as the hotel had some organizational issues, and I opened my door to discover someone already in my room!  Fortunately,
that guy was calm about the whole thing, and we eventually got a room.