IPL Quarterly Review Games 1-18

KKR tops the league right now having won 3 of their 4 games, but their success may owe more to their opponents than their own achievements. They are averaging a league lowest 141 runs per innings, mainly because their opposition with the exception of Mumbai have not challenged them with targets more than 150. The only game they were setting a target, they only managed to put up 128 runs! Lost in the mix of Pat Cummins’ blistering knock against Mumbai is the fact that their batting line-up while immensely talented with power hitters, has been put in spots of bother already in their first four games and will have to overcome far tougher bowling attacks and situations as the season progresses.

The Gujarat Titans are behind KKR in current standings as they’ve played one game less, but they are unbeaten yet this season. They have talented playmakers at every position and they all look in great touch at the moment – Shubman Gill has had a few great knocks already, Hardik Pandya has been effective with the Bat and the Ball, Mohd. Shami steaming in ball-after-ball has helped them take a league high 3 wickets on average during the powerplay overs, and Rashid Khan looks as fresh and wily as he always has! And when all else fails, Tewatia showed us his big hitting ability can win them matches too. They are one of only 4 teams to have successfully defended their total after batting first (and not against SRH!) This team could legitimately go all the way if they can play with the same intensity!

RCB had a rough start to the season when they couldn’t defend a 200 plus score, but they have pulled it back since then and are now on an impressive 3 game winning streak. While we may never find out why they didn’t retain Yuzvendra Chahal, their bowling attack has not lost all of its teeth. Hasaranga has shown matchwinning ability with the ball, as has Harshal Patel. Their real strength though, lies in their batting depth. The Faf acquisition has largely helped RCB fill a large ABD sized hole in their batting, while Kohli has looked dangerous in the first few matches, and Dinesh Karthik has shown us he’s still got it with a few finishing acts deep down the order. No team scores more runs and loses fewer wickets in the middle overs than RCB. This team’s success will be predicated on how much success their bowlers continue to have and how their enviable batting lineup measures against the best IPL bowling attacks!

 

Debutants LSG will be pleased with their opening act in IPL 2022, having won 3 out of 3 since their first loss against the Titans, their fellow debutants. A team that has batted well in all three phases – powerplay, middle and death overs – their true strengths were on display in their impressive victory chasing 210 against CSK, which they did with 3 balls to spare. Ayush Badoni has been a fantastic find for the team (and the IPL in general!) and Deepak Hooda has proved to be an asset in the middle to late overs as well. Quinton de Kock and KL Rahul are a top 3 opening pair of batsmen and the runs have been flowing for this team! It is on the other side of the ball that there have been questions. While the 4 overs from Bishnoi are a nightmare for any opposition, the rest of the bowling line up has been a tad inconsistent. Avesh Khan has looked better every game he has played, but Andrew Tye and Dushmantha Chameera have had troubles with consistency. If the Super Giants can channel their bowling attack to help capitalize on one of IPL’s best spinners, this team will be hard to beat!

The Rajasthan Royals’ social media shenanigans aside, they have had a stellar start to the season. Sanju Samson is the real deal – we always knew he was a great batsman, but his captaincy has helped the IPL look at him in an all new light! Samson and his opening partner, Jos Butler have both looked in great form and the fireworks at the top of the order, along with the big hitting Hetmeyer and underrated Padikkal have propelled RR to the IPL’s most prolific run scoring team – they are averaging 191 per game at the moment. They are also the only team to defend a score twice this season – once each against Hyderabad and Mumbai. This is in part due to their revamped shiny spin attack in Chahal and Ashwin – no other IPL team this year can boast of 2 World Class spinners on the same line up. They’re the reason RR picks a league high 4 wickets on average in the middle overs. Prasidh Krishna is bowling his best T20 ball right now, and Trent Boult bowling on the opposite end gets batsmen stuck between a rock and a hard place. The loss of Nathan Counter Nile will no doubt impact the balance of the bowling attack, but if Navdeep Saini, who also appeared to be nursing his own injury, is up and running, the team should overcome that. This team has all the pieces to make a deep run this year in the playoffs and beyond. They take on the Titans this upcoming Thursday in what could be a precursor to how things might look like at the end of May. Excitteed!

Punjab is probably the most frustrated team in the IPL right now after a series of games where they snatched losses from the jaws of victory! Their new found identity of pure unabashed hitting from first ball to last has been entertaining, as it has been effective, but they will need to close games out with wins better. No team jumps out of the gate faster with a run rate of 12 rpo in the powerplay, and they continue to score at an average 8.3 rpo after that. On the flip side, they lose a league high 5 wickets in the middle overs which results in an ill-timed slowdown right at the end. While Rahul Chahar has bowled great in each of his 4 games, the rest of the bowling attack lacks tooth and has not been able to turn situations in their favor in games. This team is still finding its recipe to winning. Johnny Bairstow further helps bolster the lineup but they need to find a way to keep Bhanuka Rajapaksa and Bairstow without further reducing their bowling options. First time IPL Captain, Mayank Agarwal, no doubt has a tough assignment.     

The Delhi Capitals popped eyes when they comfortably took down Mumbai in their opening game this season, but overall, they have looked like a side that needs help. On paper, Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel are the best spin tandem in the league alongside the Rajasthan Royals, but Rishabh Pant’s captaincy has not been able to fully utilize their strengths. For instance, in their last game against the Super Giants, in a tight run chase, Axar didn’t even bowl his quota of 4 overs! There are not really many other difference making options in the bowling attack. The Capitals are among the worst in the league in giving up runs in the powerplay overs. The batting has not done them many favors either. While they are near the league average in batting in every phase of the innings by all measures, the runs have come from different places and no real “leader” of the batting line up has emerged yet. They are only 3 games into their campaign so plenty of time to figure things out, but Ricky Ponting and Rishabh Pant will need to close some of these gaping holes on both sides of the ball to have an impact in IPL 2022

SRH had a lot of noise surrounding the team last season and in the off-season. Their decisions to get rid of a fan favorite captain (David Warner) and their most talented player (Rashid Khan) didn’t sit well with the fan base. They acquired exciting all-rounder Washington Sundar but didn’t go beyond that to acquire another spin bowler they could consistently get 4 overs out of. This leaves them overdependent on their pace attack – which is totally okay if your pace lineup is Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, T. Natarajan and the bolt-of-lightning rookie Umran Malik. SRH looks to live and die by this bowling line-up. They have won all three tosses, and chosen to bowl on all three occasions, and though the first two games resulted in losses, they turned the corner in their third game. In their win, they seemed to have identified their batting formula as well – an aggressive start by Abhishek Sharma with Kane playing an anchor across the pitch. How consistently they can execute remains to be seen, but with 3 games in the next week, this is make or break time for this team!

Why is it so hard to believe that Mumbai has not won a single game this season? They have shown flashes in all 4 games and yet, have nothing to show for it. Where are the games getting away from Mumbai? Short answer: the middle overs. While batting in overs 7-16, MI averages 68/4 – the league average is 82/3. So they score fewer runs and lose more wickets than average. On the other side of the ball, they give up a league worst 102/2 in those same overs. For MI to turn things around, they need to focus on keeping their pace in the middle overs, both while batting and bowling. With that said, there are encouraging signs for Mumbai – their batting lineup, while lacking chemistry, has been producing runs. Suryakumar Yadav in particular is continuing his swashbuckling from last year and is going to cement his place in the Indian side if he continues this trend. Ishaan Kishan is also in the running for the Orange Cap and seems in a good spot to keep contributing. Bumrah seems invincible as the King of Indian Fast Bowling, and Murugan Ashwin has shown tremendous potential. If they can find chemistry, it is still not too late for MI.

What ails the Chennai Super Kings? The perennial team of champions has been hit hard by doldrums and there seem to be no answers in sight. It starts with their bowling. CSK has the league’s worst bowling attack by any metric. They only take 4 wickets a game on average – about 2 wickets lower than the league! Their powerplay average of 52/0.5 is also the worst in the league. Injuries have continued to sideline Deepak Chahar, and Moeen Ali has not yet proved the trump card he was expected to be, at least in the bowling department. For all its shortcomings while bowling, CSK batsmen have shown flashes of being able to take the games away from the opposition. While Ruturaj Gaekwad’s inexplicable slump at the top of the order continues, Uthappa, Rayudu, Shivam Dube, Moeen Ali, Jadeja and Dhoni have all had good knocks already this season and have all looked like they could take a game away from the opposition before their premature dismissals. The biggest noticeable feature of this team of course is Jaddu’s struggle in taking captaincy away from Dhoni – there have been multiple occasions where Jaddu at deep midwicket almost is too far out of the picture to control the flow of the game, and Dhoni is talking to the bowlers and setting fields. For a team that has had a stable leadership situation its entire history, these are uncharted waters, and these may be long odds to overcome at this point!

The Fall and Fall of Boeing

Of the many thought provoking bits that Downfall pulled together in its presentation of Boeing's failures in the aftermath of the 737Max crashes, the one that struck me the most was the change in Boeing's culture in the mid 1990s. 

At the surface, the easy target is unabashed Capitalism. It is fair to say that over the decades, we have come to expect American companies to optimize moneymaking potential in all of their endeavors, skirting at the edge of ethics and moral compulsions but mostly behaving within the confines of civilized society. But it was not this urge to profiteer that affected me. The forces at play here are far more complex, and subtle. 

This phenomenon is more than just about profits. 

***

In 1984, Bhopal suffered an explosion in a pesticides and chemicals factory. In less than a few hours, the toxic gases spread around the city and killed, maimed and permanently disfigured not only the people that were unfortunate enough to live in the city at the time, but multiple generations thereafter. More than half a million people were injured, thousands died! 

The American company running the plant knew of safer (but more expensive) alternatives to the dangerous chemicals they were using in the production process. The facility also had a history of casualties from toxic exposure in the years leading up to the accident, but didn't institute permanent corrective actions to fix their controls. 

And yet, even nearly 40 years after one of the World's worst man made Disasters, condemnation of the American Manufacturer, UCC, is far from unanimous. Questions are often raised on the quality of the Indian managers running the Plant and the engineers and workers who were operating the processes. 

This is very relevant to the Boeing story, because the first public statements from Boeing and American Aerospace "Experts" in the aftermath of the crash ascertained at least a part of the blame on "Third World" pilot training. It was ironical when it eventually turned out that the pilot of the Lion Air that went down was actually trained in the United States. 

It is more than just about profits.

The issue is the purported unassailability of American Engineering. Obviously the USA cant be designing poor products and processes right? Is it not more likely that the operators from poor Asian and African countries cannot comprehend the complexity of the said American products? 

This is flawed thinking. As evidenced by Downfall, production engineers and operators (including users/consumers) are often at the mercy of design decisions made far away from the field, with limited ability to control their own destinies. 

In a World that is driven by Centralized Design, Decentralized Manufacturing, and Global Product Application, the control of critical characteristics in the product specifications is progressively moving further and further away from the end user. And unless companies strive to democratize within their supply chain and effectively establish the feedback loops to solve these engineering problems, disasters of this magnitude will probably, unfortunately continue to happen. 

And that's part of the reason why Homegrown Product Engineering and Manufacturing deserves the push in India. 

* * *

The Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion happened less than 2 years after the Bhopal Tragedy. In this case, everything was designed and developed by Russians, at that time one of the World's most technologically advanced nations. But it happened in a system that was occupied from top to bottom by the State. Engineers and Scientists were valuable, but not as valuable as the Polit Bureau member who could control through his whims and fancies the allocation of resources, and hence had to be pleased. 

In study after study, there has been critical analysis of the unintended consequences of this power dynamic - when in a moral dilemma, would an engineer owe primary allegiance to the quality of his engineering work or to the idea of serving his Motherland? 

It is more than just about profits. 

Boeing was in a rat race with Airbus and it was losing. To rise above this, quickly, was not just a matter of corporate rivalry, but one of national identity! Every part of the American Aerospace Industrial and Regulatory complex recognized this and agreed to work in coordination to fix it ASAP. 

Mission statements are great in aligning the forces of bureaucracy and paperwork in a large faceless system. The problem occurs when botched mission statements stand in direct contradiction of product integrity. Should the MCAS Engineer or the Regulator reviewing it have owed primary allegiance to the quality of his engineering work or to the idea of serving Boeing/USA by letting them get ahead in the race against Airbus? 

And if this happened in an Individualistic, Self Preservation before All Else society like America, what chance does the rest of the World stand?

* * *

Downfall was a very thought provoking movie and as shown above, got me thinking on multiple levels about the state of the World, and more personally about my role in the World as an Engineer. 

What caught me the most by surprise was that one of the World's most iconic companies, through a series of changes up at the top ended up with a culture that discouraged people, especially engineers and subject matter experts to speak their mind. 

Surely, of all places in the World, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave would have given its brilliant engineers and scientists the platform to debate on merits and demerits of technologies on scientific principles with absolutely no other consideration.Unfortunately, no.

Indian Engineers around the World are now involved in the design of most products you will encounter in your life. And in their pursuits of excellence, they might do well to remember India's motto which in times like this seems more far sighted and timeless than we have given it credit for. 

In the end, Satyameva Jayate. Truth Alone Prevails.

The Soil of the Motherland

Kaansen Khronicles #6: Revisiting songs from years past, that have been lost in the chaos of the social media-era content explosion!

 

 

Patriotic songs have always had a special place in Indian pop culture  - from the original Vande Maataram in the 1930's to the sensational 1997 reinvention by A.R.Rahman. Rahman in particular has added a great deal to the genre through his compositions for The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Swades, and Rang De Basanti. But another album in this genre is arguably his most underrated ever -  Bose, the Forgotten Hero. And no song shines brighter in this forgotten album than Desh Ki Mitti.

Desh Ki Mitti came during Rahman's most productive Symphony Orchestra Phase - the early 2000's. The use of the symphony has produced memorable pieces in A.R.Rahman's music throughout his career, but the early 2000's were when he used it in as many different scenarios as he could, producing some wonderful results - Zubeidaa, The Legend of Bhagat Singh, and he even managed to incorporate it into Lagaan, in O Ri Chori, and the Waltz piece, continuing years after in the out-of-the-world Tu Muskura, from Yuvvraj in 2008. 

Set to the Amir Kalyani ragam, a piano stringing the song together, and the orchestra providing the drama, the song is anchored in the lyrics of Javed Akhtar - a poem that describes the difficulties of an Indian stranded abroad looking for his motherland in these foreign surroundings during Bose's exile in Germany. 

The best piece of this beautiful puzzle comes in the form of Sonu Niigam's voice. Of the few songs that Sonu Niigam has lent his voice to A.R.Rahman, this one shines brightly at the top in large reason because this song needed his voice. Few songs demand one specific singer, and the choice of Sonu Niigam to sing this one was smashingly apt. Anuradha Sriram's accompanying vocals in the background lift the mood of the song significantly. If Sonu Niigam's voice represents the protagonist of the song, Anuradha is the voice of nostalgia that is drawing Bose back to his motherland. 

Each component of this song is carefully chosen and used with a level of finesse that matches the best of ARR's music. 

 

Why then has this song been forgotten? Several factors - not having a huge star, not being a very big production, and patriotic movies not necessarily being the flavor of the 2000s (none of the Bhagat Singh movies of the early 2000s worked at the box office). The lack of dedicated visuals for the song probably also played a role - not many people can necessarily picture this song in their heads. 

ARR famously doesn't pick his favorite songs - to him, they are all created equally through the same process. And it is a song like Desh Ki Mitti that demonstrates why that is an important stance. Here's a song that is as close perfection as can be, and yet didn't achieve the popularity it deserved, unlike even lesser ARR classics. 

Make for India

When was the last time an Indian product truly wowed you?
When a product was crafted so beautifully and was so uniquely Indian that it taught you something new about the heritage of the people who created it...
When you were so enamoured by the product that you didn't really care what the price tag was, and all you wanted to do was procure it...

It is not that such products do not exist. We have all seen these products. In temple streets lined with overstocked shops, along highways near level crossings, at airports, at railway stations, and at the gazillion bazaars that 90% of India shops in. We just do not know these products - there's no popular brand associated with them. There's no colorful packaging that differentiates the product from a million other less distinguished sellers of the same product. This causes a grave unintended consequence which will prevent the product from ever generating large scale economic value - a lack of sophistication! 

Sophistication in a product comes from several different means - but the ultimate goal is always the same: improving customer satisfaction. It may come from a choice of better materials, it may have longevity arising from a simpler process of production and fewer constituents, it may offer a myriad of customizations, it may come from better insight into customer preferences or it may feature the best consumer preference: low cost. All of these improve the product by a notch and give the producer a measure of protection against competition, and drive innovation. A lack of sophistication makes the product replaceable by a better version. And in a globalized world, the better version is normally a cheaper version, mass produced in a factory in China, and sold by a "brand" that has spent some time applying the above mentioned sophistications.

With the advent of GST in 2017, India has the World's largest open market, and the largest population of consumers under the age of 35 in the World. No other market has a larger sample set of consumer preferences available to analyze and tune products to. And even in an era where e-commerce rises to new heights every day, a vast majority of purchases happen offline. This gives entrepreneurs at every level of the value and supply chain to understand and analyze customer preferences, build a better brand and improve their reach to a wider market. A few iterations of this Measure-Analyze-Improve-Scale routine can succeed in creating a sophisticated, well recognized product with wide ranging economic impact that generates wealth and creates jobs. All it takes is focusing on the customer the product is being created for. 

It turns out, the best answer to the trillion dollar Make in India question, is Make for India.

Falling in Love with America's Best Idea!

The image of Yellowstone forever stuck in my head came from a Bing Wallpaper years ago. 

Years ago, logging on to Windows, Bing picked out a lock screen wallpaper that I have not forgotten. It showed a bright blue pool of water surrounded by the colors of the rainbow with fire blowing around the edges. It looked out of this World, and the image stuck in my head and carved out its own little corner in my hippocampus. Further investigation revealed this spectacular feature to be the Grand Prismatic Spring, arguably Yellowstone's most unique and celebrated feature, and that day about 8 years ago was when I subconsciously started planning America's favorite Summer Vacation. 

Our travels through the other jewels in the National Parks System had only elevated the sense of anticipation we felt for this trip that was yet destined for some time in the future. The opportunity arrived in 2019, when we finally decided that our Memorial Day would be spent in Wyoming. For years, I had dreamt of the Grand Prismatic Spring, wowed at the towering Teton peaks in photography exhibitions, and been amazed by the Serengeti of America in the Lamar Valley. This was our chance to be there and see for ourselves if these images in my mind were a product of the Great American Marketing machinery or if there was substance to it.

If you have only one shot at viewing the Tetons, and want the best picture out of the trip, head to Schwabacher Landing early in the Morning. 

P.S: Remember to go low when you get the picture. Very Low. Lower. 

Memorial Day is a great time of the year. It's late May and the fickle minded nature of the weather makes way for a more consistent Sunny experience, with the occasional rain shower keeping things fresh and interesting. Our previous Memorial Day sojourns had taken us to the Badlands & Custer in South Dakota, and we wanted to take our Wild West experience a notch higher with the trip to Wyoming. Up in the mountains, May always carries the risk of a late season blizzard, but it had the benefit of thin crowds that only start to pick up when Summer kicks in, and more importantly, increased observable wildlife activity from animals emerging from Hibernation, descending upon the Great Plains, foraging while the day temperatures are still relatively cool. 

While in Yellowstone-Grand Teton, chances are you will be in Bear Jams, and chances are that some of the bears you see will be young. Young bears are still fairly large like we found out when we encountered this family near the Pilgrim Creek region in Grand Teton.  It is fascinating to learn that a lot of the bear moms like hanging out near the roads because that keeps them safe from Eternally Hangry Grizzly Dads who like killing cubs that ain't theirs. Something to do with establishing genetic supremacy. Getting rid of the grizzly obsession is crucial to enjoying the Park. We got over ours after the 15th bear in the first four days of trip, and once we got that out of the way, the natural beauty of the park was even more stunning! Before the trip, we really would've liked to see bears. By the end of the trip, we had seen so many (both black, and grizzly) that our focus shifted towards their more elusive competitors at the top of the food chain: The Gray Wolves. We didn't see any wolves on our trip. Guess we need to head back soon.... 

For months, we pondered and debated every last detail of the trip - where we would stay, how many days we would spend at each part of the park. You see, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is huge - large enough to be a State by itself. And as experienced roadtrippers, we knew only too well not to get caught in the trap of having one home base throughout our trip and drive around to the destinations - that simply doesn't work. Instead, we decided to break our 10 day trip into 3 days at Jackson Hole near the Tetons, which was the far south portion of our itinerary, 3 days in Cooke City, the eastern most part of Yellowstone and the Gateway to the Lamar Valley wildlife experience, and 3 more days in the central"8" Loop of the park, so we could easily access the Thermal features, and make multiple trips to the Grand Prismatic Spring. At the time we planned it, we did not know the park and driving distances too well, but in hindsight, our stay locations gave us the best shot at taking in all of Yellowstone-Grand Teton on a slow and relaxed schedule. 

Hot water sculpting layer upon layer of limestone with its own acidic carbonic acid solution is a spectacle worth seeing at the Mammoth Hot Springs area - as a side bonus, you are guaranteed the observation of elk at close quarters, present in large numbers in the parking lots and around the village. Even when they don't really care about you, you are obliged to move 6 feet or further away from them. They are biig, and can do significant damage without much effort. 

Our typical day on the trip went something like this. We woke up for the Sunrise, every single day and stayed up for Sunset. The dawn and dusk are when a lot of excitement happened in the park. The Golden hours of Sunlight made for great pictures, and wildlife was up and about. Around the time of our trip in May, the Sun typically rose at about 6 AM and set at about 9.15 PM. So maximizing our daylight hours meant we went to bed a little after 10 and woke up at 5 every morning. We caught up with sleep in peak Sun hours - about midday, after we had scraped bits and pieces for lunch.

As it turned out, there were more things to learn about the Grand Prismatic Spring before we could cross it off our bucket lists. In early spring,when the air temperature is still fairly cool, and the surface temperature of the hot water spring is significantly higher, a steady stream of condensation blows over the spring, making it hard to visualize the colors in all their glory for more than a couple seconds now and then. Oh, and you realize you can never personally view the spring from right up above as seen in the Bing Wallpaper....duh! Not unless you are in a helicopter that stays low while you admire the beauty. 

Lunch and Dinner were arguably our most difficult planning assignment. Food for grass eaters such as ourselves is hard enough in any non-urban American setting. Add to that the vastness, and remoteness of traveling through Yellowstone, and the problem compounds. On our very first day in the park, we realized, we wouldn't necessarily be able to drive to a restaurant or concession stand precisely when we wanted food - we went hungry for lunch that day. We would have to plan our meals in advance, and stock up on food whenever we found some, even if we didn't really need it at the time. This change in strategy meant, each time we were able to find a restaurant and fresh food, we would buy two more of whatever we ate to-go, so that we wouldn't go hungry if we found a grizzly or a wolf pack on our drive back on Lamar Valley. And trust me, that happened several times. 

The Pros of traveling to Yellowstone in early-Spring - Exhibit A. Spring is shorthand for Baby Animal Season. This moose calf was likely days old when a traffic jam spotted it, and this was one among several young animals we encountered on the trip. Cons: Remember, baby elk and moose are staple diet for Grizzly families (who also tend to have really young babies this time of the year), and you cannot wish away everything you are about to see in the Wild. Not the kind of stuff you want to remember from vacations!

Weather is the other element you've to be watchful of. Days before the trip, the forecast looked really discouraging with every day in the week we were going to spend at the park showing either rain or snow. The Park Cams on the NPS website that relay real time park conditions and traffic was almost always showing dense fog or wet roads. I even went as far as buying rain protective covers for my telephoto lens preparing to always be shooting in rain. Fortunately, the reality of the situation was not as bad. There were a couple days passing through the mountains when the snow did give us some anxious moments (there's not much shoulder on the roads on the Mt.Washburn pass). We could never make it down the spectacular Beartooth Highway due to heavy snow and landslide in that area. But for the most part, we could stay informed on the weather and prepared accordingly, and managed our expectations. We did enjoy bright blue skies, and sunny days during most of our trips. Clouds during Sunrise and Sunset actually helped the landscape look more dramatic! 

 

Yellowstone is popular as America's first National Park. It's goal is to preserve the wilderness that once spanned the entire North American continent before the colonization and industrialization of the 19th & 20th centuries. Once away from the roads, on hikes at least a few miles away from the road, the feeling of isolation and having the whole World to yourself is real. It is not hard to find yourself the canopy of a large tree and a lush green meadow to lay upon for a little siesta, with scarcely other people to disturb you. Although, in that scenario, it would be wise to have your wife awake and on the lookout for any curious bears because they like the same exact thing.  

America is proud of Yellowstone - it is often called "America's Best Idea" - and the ideas of preservation started at Yellowstone have been emulated through the rest of America, and the rest of the World. And yet, the scale of Yellowstone - the area of land owned and developed with road networks and infrastructure - is virtually unparalled. But the cost of creating this park was significant too. It is easy to forget the decades of Armed conflicts in the Yellowstone region, and the forcible eviction of the Native American tribes who called the vicinities of the Park home, and tied spiritual significance to the thermal features of the parks. A visitor to Yellowstone today does not encounter relics from the grim past when millions of bison were slaughtered for a multitude of reasons ranging from creating more grazing lands for cattle, to beating boredom on long train journeys on the Pacific Railroad. There is no other way of looking at it - Yellowstone was built on blood and tears. 

The story of the park is captured in great detail in the book "Empire of Shadows" by George Black. Page after page, the book sums up the price nature and humanity paid so that two hundred years later, the people of the World could appreciate what nature was before the destructive forces of the Industrial Revolution. 

When you are done enjoying the treasures Yellowstone has to offer, try to read more about the price Native Americans and Nature had to pay so we could appreciate the Wilderness centuries later. 

When we were planning our trip to Yellowstone, the years of pent-up excitement and anticipation often made us wonder if we had maybe built it up too much in our heads - surely, there was no way it could be as good as we were expecting it to be, and that we would likely be underwhelmed when we finally got there. We were pretty sure we would come back with pictures and memories, but that we would move on to our next trip and forget everything about this place when something cooler came along, like every other State and National Park we had been to.  

It wasn't. 

We knew exactly what we were going to be seeing, and we were still awed at everything we experienced during our 10 days in the area. After our trip to Yellowstone is when we started questioning our goal of giving every US State a chance, and getting to all 50 of them before we started to pick favorites. Yellowstone spoiled us, and has made it an involuntary compulsion for us to keep returning there for every vacation for the rest of our lives.

 And I don't blame us. We are humans after all. When you can fall so much in love with something so familiar and accessible, and still gain a generous measure of excitement from it, why then would you ever go looking for anything new?