The Great Road Trip 2011 – Part 3 - Yellowstone

Day 2 on the road.

When I last left off, we were in Bozeman, MT, staying in a gnasty motel, the Bozeman Inn.  We opted to skip the breakfast at the motel (a box of fairly picked over donuts) and got our Subway on.  Actually, they do a pretty good (and cheap) breakfast.  Plus, we got sandwiches for lunch, so we wouldn't be forced to eat at Old Faithful and pay their captive prices.

The drive down US-191 through the Gallatin National Forest and along the Gallatin River was breathtaking.

The road rolled along the river…

And wound thru the mountains…

And even had some meadow like spots for us to get out and take some pictures of us…

And the wild flowers.

In this video, I believe you just miss Cora swearing like a sailor or something.  Not sure why I reminded her I was running video.

We made it into Yellowstone around noon, and stopped a few times for pictures.

Isn't that an amazing picture?  Too bad that wasn't one of ours.  We passed this spot without stopping.  (So I stole it from the internet.)  We blasted passed it.  We were heading to Old Faithful (and the bathrooms that it promised us).

When we got to Old Faithful, we parked, and made a B-Line to the bathrooms.  As we emerged, refreshed, the crowds were heading for their cars.  Arrrrg!  Just missed the eruption?  And it erupts every 90 or so minutes?!?  Double-Arrrg!  There was noting to do but wait.  We explored around a little, got our sandwiches out of the car, and totally broke the rules be eating them in the entryway to the visitor's center, right in front of the sign saying not to do that.

It was a spot in the shade.

Eventually, we walked out to the benches that are around the geyser.  (Not around the "geezer", when they blow off steam, you don't want to see it.)  We were all prepared for one of the most fantastic, awe inspiring moments of our life…

And, as you can see, it didn't disappoint.  Before we left, we had some bikers take our picture by the sign, before we headed out the east side of the park.

I really enjoyed the drive around Yellowstone Lake. Here's a view from above.

And a view of my lovely wife.

Oh give me a home, where the buffalo (singular) roam…

and the deer (singular) and the… Well, we didn't see any antelope, and the discouraging words were to come later in the evening.

But they did seem to be a bit concerned about Craig's driving.

We crossed the continental divide a few time on the trip, and we finally got a picture of us there.  And we took about 5 pictures for other people who kept stopping, asking us to take their pictures, too.

And with that, we said good-bye to Yellowstone.

East of Yellowstone National Park is Shoshone National Forrest.  Looks like a pretty straight line on a US highway, simple, right?

Well, there were sheer walls in front of you…

And winding down hill sections that just made you white knuckled hoping that you don't take the quick way down the mountain to the river below.

Well, not in THAT picture, but trust me, you were going up and down mountains constantly.

Thankfully, at one spot, they had the smarts to go THRU the mountain, instead of OVER the mountain.

And I loved blasting thru the tunnel.

We made it to Cody, WY for dinner (B.K.), some fuel, and a look at the map.  It looked like we could easily make it to Gillette for the evening.  That would set us up great for getting to Mt. Rushmore the next day.  And since I had driven all day, we switched out, and Cora took over the driving.

But the road that I thought was going to look like this all the way…

turned into this twisty, turny, road thru Bighorn National Forest with some serious drop offs…

And the sun was setting…

Oh, and freakin' COWS were on the road!

And the stress level in the car was rising.  Not between us, but as I said, the sun is setting and we were driving thru the wilderness and there had just been cows in the road.  What next?  A moose?

That's not a Google picture.  That's by me, standing on the side of the road as this moose wandered thru the field, and across the road.  And then it jumped the fence like most of you step over a curb.

As cool as seeing a moose was, it reminded us of how dangerous things were getting. We were psyched as the sun went down, and the interstate lie ahead.  We hoped that this was the last animal we were going to see along the side of the road.

But then this sign carried a bit of foreboding…

Unfortunately, what we hoped would be the salvation of getting back on I-90 wasn't.  The combination of the previous stint of driving, the unlit interstate that was also under construction and very unsmooth and the constant signs for animal crossings had Cora a little INTENSE, wondering if the frogs (who freak during travel) are going to die of heart attacks, or if we were going to get a moose thru the windshield.

I asked her a few times if she wanted to switch, but she said she would have been just as tense with me driving, and I'd already driven most of the day.  I stopped asking when I got "the look". Gentlemen, you know the look.  And you know to sit there and shut-the-frak-up after getting said look.

Just before midnight, we pulled into the Comfort Inn in Gillette, WY.  I'm pretty sure Cora has never been happier to get out from behind the wheel in her life.  And this motel was SOOOOOO much better than the Bozeman Inn from the night before.

And we needed a good night's sleep. The drive had been exhausting.  And there was a lot of things we were planning to do in and around Rapid City, SD the next day.  And we were a few hours short of where I'd hoped we'd be at the end of the day.

Dang you bathroom break @ Old Faithful!!!