Travel Trailer Trek

A Geologists Dream: from Geysers to Dusty Roads

We arrived at West Yellowstone, Montana in time for lunch at our site. We stayed at West Gate KOA, which was one of the nicest campground we've been in. Unfortunately, we spent all our time in Yellowstone and didn't get a chance to take advantage of the amenities offered by this campground.

Yellowstone Park is basically shaped like a figure eight. We decided to do the bottom loop on our first day at the park. This included paint pots, which were bubbling pools of mud, hot springs, which had a deep sapphire blue in the center and an orange ring of bacteria on the edge, which can survive in the hot temperatures, and of course, geysers like old faithful, which was only a few minutes late (it has a window of+ or- ten minutes). We saw many beautiful waterfalls and the momma Elk with their babies stopped traffic along the way. We saw buffalo and huge ravens. You would think a nuclear power plant was nearby.

We made it to Yellowstone Lake and had dinner at Grants village. It was getting late, so we turned around to head back to our camper. Since it was the fourth of July, West Yellowstone had fireworks. Dan and Caris stayed at the camper tho make a campfire, while Mitch and Carolyn went to see fireworks. Unfortunately, the firewood was in the truck, but the fireworks were fun. There were two sets going off at the same time, so we got to see both. The town was packed and the traffic was terrific.

Since we've had such long days of travel prior to this, we decided to sleep in and pack a picnic lunch to have at the park. Taking the northern route, we ran into construction on the way to mammoth hot springs. We were stopped for about twenty minutes, so had poor picnic lunch while we waited for a pace car top take us through the construction. While driving thru the construction, we saw two buffalo on the side of the road…. One sitting in the dirt. We later learned that when the babies are born, the males get kicked out and are known to “wallow” in the sand. They're supposedly upset by this, so are known to go off by themselves. The sand helps with the bugs and cools them down. We saw a lot of male buffalo. They called them bachelors at this stage. This is also where we her the term wallowing in self-pity.

We traveled to the Travertine Terraces via a small one-way route. We also saw a petrified tree. When we got to the site of the tree, there was a ranger present because a bear was sleeping under a tree in the ravine. It was really hot but we took some pictures of the bear and headed to Roosevelt Lodge. We signed up for a cowboy cookout and this is where we were to meet. We were in wagon number six and traveled with about 150 others via wagon train to the site where we were treated to steak, Roosevelt beans, cornbread, corn, watermelon, potato salad, coleslaw and peach cobbler. We had a variety of drinks including cowboy coffee. They said they knew the coffee was done when a horseshoe would float in it. It had character. About fifty horseback riders joined us for our meal.

They told us stories around the fire and sang cowboy songs until it was time to return on the dusty road back to the Roosevelt Corral. We saw more bison and heard the history of the area. When the first explorers came back and described what they saw at Yellowstone, no one believed them. The waterfalls that ran upside down (geysers), boiling streams, etc. They thought they were making everything up. As it was getting dark a storm came across Yellowstone and we were treated to a lightning display across the sky on the other side of the park. We arrived back late, grabbed showers to be ready for an early departure to avoid traffic. We were awaken by a text from Carolyn’s mom telling us we were about 100 miles from the epicenter of an earthquake in Montana that happened last night. We were out cold and never felt it.

We drove through the southern part of Yellowstone and through part of the Teton National Park to get to Evansville, WY, near Casper, WY. It was a scenic drive through mountains and quaint western towns. We had some dinner and went to see the Wonder Woman movie. A storm came and put a rip in our awning about 2 feet long, so we’re working on figuring that out. We also discovered a leak in the kitchen sink, but using the phone as a video camera, we were able to see the fitting just needed to be tightened. Crisis averted. We're heading further south tomorrow.