Days 7 & 8 - Yellowstone, Tetons, and Potatoes

Maybe we missed something, but for all the Old West imagery you get when you hear about places like Billings, Montana, it wasn't exactly what we'd expected. We were really there to try some Montana trout fishing with our fly rods, but hadn't realized that the snow melt would make the water levels too high. The whitewater rafting guides weren't running either (not until the weekend), so we hit the road and headed South towards Yellowstone, only to find out that the entrance to the park we'd hoped to take through Red Lodge was closed because of SNOW!!!

We took a really beautiful detour through the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway (known for having been the route Chief Joseph took through the park to escape the US Cavalry and flee to Canada). It was very rough terrain, the first real mountainous roadway we came to. The road signs were quite entertaining...



We came to the small mountain town of Cooke City. Excepting the gas station and snow mobile rental place, the businesses had only started to reopen after being snowed in all winter. The guy at the general store told us he had only reopened his shop the previous week. We bought a few chocolates and some beef jerky, and hit the (dirt) road. And what a mess the road was- the dirt had been washing out from the snow melt, and there was a bit of construction to get it back inorder before the season really kicks in. Entering the park, we found that there were only two campgrounds open, first come first served, so we hit the ground running, with the intention of getting registered as soon as we could... There were LOTS of things along the way to the campground though... Bison, elk, bighorn sheep, mammoth hot springs, the visitor's center, more elk, more bison, more bison...

We finally got to the campground where we had to wait in LINE to get registered for a site!!! There were 250 sites, and it was probably 80% filled by the time we got there at 8pm. We weren't too thrilled when we found out that the site they assigned us was already taken, but we got it all fixed. With so many people there I had expected some to be obnoxious, drunk, and loud, but amazingly, it was relatively quiet and peaceful!!! The folks who ran the campground really laid down the law when you first came in, so that may have had something to do with it.

In the morning, we headed to Old Faithful, which was really very neat. We had some time to kill, so we headed over to get some coffee and munchies at the cafe, where Jess spent some time trying to help an older gentleman chase a squirrel out of the great hall of the lodge (to no avail). The geyser started right on time, and we had just enough battery power in the camera to take a photo while the water sprinkled on our faces.

We finished our drive through the park, seeing some familiar faces...

Then headed down through the Tetons and Jackson Hole, stopping for lunch at Nora's Fish Creek Inn, where we'd had a great dinner our last time out here in August after the Association of NAture Center Administrator's conference at Teton Science Schools. Nora's is in Wilson, just outside of Jackson Hole at the base of the Teton Pass. Last time we were there we had some AMAZING trout for dinner, and this time around our lunch proved just as good (and relatively cheap too).

After driving through the Pass, and passing through VICTOR, Idaho (shout-out to Bryan "Hey Victor!" Gomes) , we sauntered our way to Twin Falls. Along the way we stopped at the Idaho Potato Museum, where we learned the history of Potatoes and why Idaho is a god place to grow them (thanks to the Snake River, which starts in Yellowstone and ends in the Columbia River in Washington!)...

WOOOO!!!!


Today (day 9) we're heading to Craters of the Moon National Park outside of Twin Falls Idaho, before heading down to breeze through Nevada for our last day of the big trip...