Wyoming and Montana – Yellowstone National Park

Wyoming and Montana – Yellowstone National Park

September 26, 2007, 9:25 pm
Filed under: Good Days, National Parks, Towns

Day Twelve

We woke up on Day Twelve at Buffalo Bill’s Antler Inn, packed our things and ran out the door, eager to see what was waiting for us at Yellowstone. The sun, at this point, was high in the sky and the weather was warm with a slight breeze. It was a perfect way to spend a day at a National Park, especially considering that it was my birthday. I couldn’t ask for much better than being at the country’s largest and oldest National Park on my birthday. No amount of barhopping or cake can compete with that.

Our drive to Yellowstone was incredible. The West Entrance to the park was about an hour from the town that we’d been staying in, and it consisted mainly of a winding roads through a state forest, and along a vibrantly-colored lake. Again, it was another drive full of “whoa”-ing and other astonished noises.

We weren’t driving for long within the park when we encountered a few traffic stops. The first of which was a dead stop for about 20 minutes, to hold for some construction that had been going on, on the road. The second was a more brief stop for some buffalo who were standing in the road, apparently pretending to be cars. It’s hard to be angry about an enormous animal standing in front of you, especially one as hairy as a Yellowstone buffalo. Eventually, they moved along and we were free to do what people in cars do best.

Yellowstone is enormous. In fact, the word “enormous” really doesn’t convey the sense of hugeness that overcomes you as you drive through it’s winding roads and paths. About when we came upon Yellowstone Lake (another enormous feature) we noticed the sky beginning to darken, and the clouds starting to close out our beautiful day. And then the rain started to fall, and it didn’t really completely stop for a day or so. Nevertheless, we managed to see a ton of the park, including Old Faithful.

Now, most people travelling to Yellowstone for the first time might stop and wait for the geyser to erupt. Unfortunately, we had to high-tail it to the other side of the park, so that we could find some sort of accomodations for the evening. To anyone planning to go to Yellowstone, even after the summer is over: make reservations someplace, or else you’ll end up like us, driving for hours through the park (yes, hours, it’s that big) just to make sure that our accommodations were still available in the next town over, in Montana. Not Wyoming.

So, unfortunately, we couldn’t wait for Old Faithful to erupt, so we took a picture in front of it and had an artist (Brian) render what it might have looked like if we had been there at the point of eruption. You’ll notice I’m playing air guitar in the photo. This is because it rocked so hard.

Ah, I don’t know either.

We ended up spending the night in West Yellowstone, a town which is not in Wyoming like its’ namesake, but rather in Montana. The town of West Yellowstone, Montana is kind of a weird half-dilapidated fake-wild-west tourist town with a hundred different Saloon-style restaurants and stores selling things with leather fringe. While it might’ve been nice to look the part of the cowboy-tourists, we agreed that the rain might’ve ruined our new leather accoutrements, and opted to instead spend the money on some birthday beer at the Wolf Pack Microbrewery.

There is not much to complain about from here on out. We had a few pints of excellent local brews, and I got mocked by the Brewmaster for being a Red Sox fan from Southern Connecticut. Lo and behold, he was from Northern Connecticut, but wasn’t quite stating any particular Major League allegiances. Hey, I’m used to the mockery back home, I can take it here, too.

Happy and full, we went back to our little cabin and went to sleep. Despite the rain, it was a pretty cool birthday.

Day Thirteen

We woke up around ten o’clock, threw our things into the car, and decided that today would be yet another day of insane driving hours. Not only did we decide to drive all the way to Missoula, Montana (a good five or six hours of road time), but we decided to drive through Yellowstone, so we could see a bit more of the park. Despite the continued rain, we came across some more endlessly incredible features.

The problem with Yellowstone is that when you really want to get back to I-90 to continue your travels, you get stuck behind a line of cars driven by the oldest people possible, turning an hour at the speed limit into two hours at half of it. I guess we shouldn’t complain — we were actually seeing Yellowstone at the beginning of the slow season, and it could’ve been worse. But the park just seems to go on, and on, and on. Soon enough you’ve had enough pretty views and rain and just want to see some more 70 mph speed limits. Don’t get me wrong, at some point we’re going to want to see Yellowstone again, and we’ll each probably go back some time in our lives, and spend the week necessary to hike and check it all out first-hand. For example, we had a personal mission to see a bear (from a distance, of course) and failed that mission miserably. Someday we’ll see that bear.

The road to Missoula was pretty similar to the road to Yellowstone; lots of mountains and hills and up-and-down driving. Prudence, our ever-faithful car, got a little fed up now and then and shut off the cruise control when the driving became too much. This made the uphill driving a bit more of a challenge, but we got through it together and found our way to the town, booked a night in the Bel Aire Motel, lost a few dollars in a casino machine in a bar, had a couple of beers, and went to bed.

Day Fourteen

Very little happened on day fourteen, as it was just another driving day.

For the most part, Missoula was only a stop on our trip because it was a halfway point between Yellowstone and Seattle. So, today we checked out of our motel around eleven, and found our way to the biggest cafe that we’ve ever seen. Literally, you could fit six or seven Starbucks locations inside of this one place. Fortunately, they had wi-fi, and I was able to edit the Badlands video while drinking one of the best hot Chais that I’d ever had.

Brian and I later agreed that if we were ever forced at gunpoint to move to Montana, we’d probably be okay with going to Missoula. Aside from there being an enormous college population, the town is pretty young and hip. One of our travel guides lists it as a “liberal city inside of a largely conservative state”. It isn’t so much the political agenda of the town that draws us, either (though it helps), but a weird cooincidence that we’ve noticed where we get stared at in any place that our guidebook considers to be “largely conservative”. I’m not placing judgement, but I guess we just look too obviously Northeastern or Urban. Oh well. In any case, Missoula was pretty great for the short time that we were there.

There isn’t much say about the rest of the day, other than that we then made the 9 hour drive from Missoula to Seattle, in which we crossed the snowy Continental Divide (yes, snowy) and arrived at night. We had booked an Econolodge room while driving, and then proceeded to get lost trying to find it. An hour later, we found it, ate some Taco Bell, and packed it in for the night. Two days of mostly driving are not the best for your mind or body, and we were getting irritable, so sleep came easy.

It really hit me just how far we’d come when I looked down at the odometer yesterday and realized that my car had crossed 90,000 miles. This, of course, means that we’ve driven nearly 5,000 miles so far — we’ll be getting an oil change fairly soon. On the way to Seattle we got our (inevitable) speeding ticket for doing 12 over the limit on a 70 mph road. It was unfortunate, but the cop wasn’t screaming his head off or anything, so we just kind of took the ticket and went on our way. Money kind of becomes a weird concept, when you’re out on the road like this. Brian and I have been taking turns filling up the gas tank, and you never really realize how much you’re spending until you inevitably check your bank account on the computer. Mine has taken quite the hit so far, and I thought we were being generally frugal about the whole thing. Oh well. We only really get one chance at this thing — might as well make it worth it.

Right now I’m sitting on the bottom bunk of our bed at the Vancouver Hostelling International in downtown Vancouver. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough footage for a video for this update, and there probably won’t be one for this city either. However, we’ll probably have much to say about this, our little Canadian detour. Vancouver has been a really interesting experience. More on that later. Right now I need to get away from this computer. Yikes.

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