Making the Most of It

A traveling pro-tip: When you're out on the road, buy a pretty postcard of your favorite stop. Write yourself a quick story about the adventures you've had, then mail it from a local post office. For $1 and a stamp, you have a postmarked souvenir that tells your story!

September 6th, 2023 - Yellowstone Day 5

For the number of postcards I've admired, I don't know how we never thought to send one to ourselves. Every national park has postcards. Heck, many touristy towns have postcards too. At the time of writing this, I’ve found postcards all over the place. I found a blank 1990s photo postcard at a conjoined restaurant/antique store in Hawaii. At a swap meet in Ohio, I found a 1960s Garden of the Gods postcard written by a woman named Grace. New and old, postcards have a unique way of being tangible memories. Our collection now covers our kitchen fridge, a constantly-shifting collage of happy experiences. When fridge magnets run out, I’ll slip them into an antique cigar box for our children to eventually find. Perhaps they’ll enjoy our memories too.

Our postcard tradition first occurred to us the night before we flew out of Yellowstone. Excitedly, I had rummaged through our luggage and emerged with the pretty postcard I had bought on a whim. When the morning dawned blue and beautiful the next day, we drove over to Fort Yellowstone, where Yellowstone's own post office resides. I was brimming with excitement. How cool was it going to be to have a Yellowstone postcard with Yellowstone stories and a Yellowstone postmark? I thought it was pretty legit.

We stuck our postcard in the mailbox and said goodbye, then got in a nice stretch of the legs as we strolled around Fort Yellowstone. We'd already been in a bison jam that morning, so it felt great to have the morning sun warming our hair as we worked out our roadtrip muscle kinks.

Fort Yellowstone is a neat piece of Yellowstone history. As the first US National Park, Yellowstone set the precedent for how national parks should be regulated and protected. After its formation in 1872, Yellowstone struggled with some serious poaching issues. Refusing to respect the protected status of the land, many people helped themselves to the natural resources present there. To set up some structure, the Army sent soldiers in the 1880s. Fort Yellowstone was the result. The Army remained in the park for several decades until the National Park Service was established in 1916. With the formation of the National Park Service came park rangers, who took up the sacred role of protecting the park and its resources. Today, Fort Yellowstone serves as the home for many park rangers. As we strolled past old army barracks, we witnessed the early morning stirrings of an ordinary Wednesday in Yellowstone. Flowers decorated the porch of one residence. In another, a ranger waved to us through their window as they fed their dog. To them, the park is more than just a park. It's home.

I still think about Fort Yellowstone sometimes. It evokes that familiar feeling of sonder- the realization that there are countless people with unique lives and stories, just like me. It's good to have a bit of sonder in our lives, I think. It preserves the wonder of the world. And who doesn't like a bit of wonder?

Check out our pre-flight photos here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/pfPdRZUGfcysBHjU8