Finding America

We made and early start this morning and just ate some yogurt on the road heading south to Yellowstone. The drive down 191 was really scenic. This truly is the home of “Big Sky”. The drive was enjoyable and we ended up making pretty good time. That could be partially attributed to the fact that we only passed 2 other cars on the road and I also have the feeling that anytime I’m heading south it is probably downhill.

Tossing the dice we rolled up to the first campsite we saw and we hit the jackpot. Grizzly Yellowstone RV Park was super nice. The facilities were impeccably clean and the park was very well maintained. We were both very pleased with our decision to stay here and felt like finding such a nice place to call home for the next few days was a good omen.

About a block away we grabbed some grub after we unhooked Kodi. The café had a movie schedule for the Imax theater in West Yellowstone and we made a mental note of the times in case inclement weather drove us inside one afternoon.

The park entrance is about 5 blocks from the RV park and armed with maps and newsletters from the ranger at the gate we were ready for our first foray into what is perhaps the quintessential American national park.

The video below was taken between the entrance and the Old Faithful parking lot. We saw so many animals and amazing geological sites that we could have easily called it a day without even seeing the most famous geyser in the world (well at least in our opinion).

As if all that natural wonder we had already seen wasn’t enough we topped off our initial exploration of Yellowstone with a stop in to see Mr. Regular, aka Old Faithful. Like a Swiss time piece this geyser has been wowing audiences with its regularity for years. Erupting every 90 minutes, this is one natural phenomenon that you can depend on. Interestingly just 5 minutes after the geyser went off the place was vacates and the Old Boy is left so rest up for his next center stage performance.

Check out the pics and video of this amazing geyser.

Following the eruption we strolled through the Yellowstone Lodge at Old Faithful which served as a model for Disney’s Fort Wilderness Lodge. While it is looking a little tired these days, it is still a rather impressive building and hearkens back to the early days of the park.

Eager to see more of the park before calling it a day, we continued on from the Lodge towards West Thumb. The road wound through thick forest and seemed to climb quite a bit. There was still a considerable amount of snow on the ground and we passed a sign designating the western continental divide. That’s Cool! Descending from the divide we made our way to West Thumb which ended up being well worth the drive. Due to its location further way from the heart of the park we were able to enjoy the thermal pools and the placid lake without the buzz of tourists constantly interrupting the ambiance.

We agreed that visiting the West Thumb Basis was worth the extra bit of driving. We headed home afterwards and were again so happy to be staying in such a nice park. The weather was nice so I pulled out the grill and brought the awning out. We had some grilled chicken accompanied by coos coos for dinner and followed that up with excellent showers in the RV park’s facilities. Having our own shower onboard Kodi keeps me from venturing to the park’s showers more often than not, but these had such nice water pressure and were so clean that I couldn’t pass up the chance to shower like a regular human being.

Clean, full and exhausted we climbed into bed and counted buffalo until we dozed off.