West Yellowstone Travelodge

Der absolute Hammer...auch unser zweiter, dritter und vierter Tag im Yellowstone waren traumhaft, unbeschreiblich, spannend und dieses Mal hat sogar das Wetter mitgespielt. Wir haetten locker 1000 Fotos machen koennen, haben uns aber auf 200 beschraenkt :-) Wir haben Hunderte von Bisons (Amerikanische Bueffel), unzaehlige Elche, ca. 10 Koyoten, Springboecke, Gaense, Voegel, Squirrels, etc. gesehen. Die Elche hier sehen zwar eher wie grosse Hirsche aus, aber ...

... und das in wenigen Tagen...von wegen Kulturschock auf einer Weltreise, bei uns ist es ein Temperaturschock :-)

Jedenfalls dachten wir, unser California Rental Car hat sowieso nur Sommerpneus. Heute morgen haben wir aber festgestellt, dass alle anderen nur Sommerpneus haben und unser California Auto sogar bereit ist fuer die Passfahrten im Schnee :-)

Und da alle finden, wir sollten mehr Videos drehen, haben wir heute eine ganze Ladung gemacht :-)

... the morning was of course around 56 - 58F.
Needless to say that is the whole day. And that is without the tourist traffic jam when a bison, moose or elk is within viewing distance of the road. Oh, yes, the cars pile up for 10-20 min. because they won't just pull over & park to let others by. Granted that motorcycles don't do well in line-ups anyway, but I did get stuck in 2 yesterday and three today. Hey, I love seeing ...

So I left Buffalo WY in sun and a balmy 57F going on Rte 16 thru Ten Sleep and Cody to Yellowstone NP. I am excited heading up into the mountains and, hmm, yes, getting colder. Never mind, the layers are good and I'll just adjust the air deflectors so my legs are warmed up by the V-Twin.

What's the temp? 50 and dropping. The lowest was 40F (sometimes you don't really want to know what the temp ...

... bird of prey perched upon a treetop that I hope to find a ranger to identify tomorrow.  Most of my other scenery pictures are of the boiling geothermal "pots" and the incredibly green forests and meadows all over the park.    These deserve special mention because of the fires (very interesting link) that in more recent years have been allowed to burn freely once they're started by ...

... chosen to stop right next to our car so that we could get a birds eye view of what was going on. He was still at a distance, so not as close as the earlier bison, but 30-50 metres was an amazing sight. The bear jam he created was even more impressive. Cars were everywhere. People were everywhere. Fun to watch people turn and run when the bear seemed to be coming closer. They must not know how fast these great beasts can run. One thing we did learn ...

... north on Highway 20, passing the place where TV was invented (funny, but after 3 weeks we are not missing the thing at all!) and eventually into Montana and West Yellowstone, where we met our first Park Ranger (tomorrow it should be Yogi and Boo Boo). Another long day driving, but what a superb day full of experiences - we keep thinking we cannot top the things we have seen so far and every day we are proved wrong. Let's see what tomorrow brings

... than we could handle, we viewed another geyser/hot pool area near Lake Yellowstone and headed off to home. We were turned off our route by the rangers, a fire smoke we had noticed earlier had grown larger as we drove this way, we can only assume we had driven towards this blaze, we were given no explanation as to the closure of the road, we U-turned and returned the way we came, a stop for a cuppa then home. We had a few glimpses of some elk on our way back but ...

... again you stand back and allow them to load up for you... If by chance your bill had an odd few pence on it and you haven't the change, well there's always a little pot at the till where previous customers have dropped their odd few pence, so the cashier will use these for you! When entering or leaving said supermarket "parking lot" the pedestrian RULES! Cars stop wherever you are to allow you to make your way, as slowly as you feel, to ...

We packed up this morning to head to Yellowstone. Before we left town, Kelly and the boys visited the 'Museum of the Rockies.' The boys really enjoyed the King Tut exhibit. We also drove to the small downtown area of Bozeman to grab a bite to eat. There was a beautiful historic neighborhood with some amazing old homes. It took us almost two hours to get to West Yellowstone. The whole drive was beautiful, but when you get into Yellowstone, it's just amazing ...