Sorry I've been out for the last week or so. I've been recuperating from the drive home and getting back into the routine here. Let's go back in time a bit and tell you a little about our drive home. First, Chance and I left Portland while Scott was still in Norfolk, VA. We spent the first night in Missoula, MT just the two of us. The next day we were supposed to pick Scott up in Billings at 3pm but his flight got delayed and rerouted so he would not be arriving until 10pm. With all this extra time I was looking for something fun to do to keep us busy till it was time to pick Scott up from the airport.
After looking at a map I discovered that we were only 1 hour from Yellowstone which would give us about 3 hours to see the sights in the park before starting off toward Billings. It would be a whirlwind trip but I couldn't pass it up. We took very pretty road from the interstate to the park then of course we had to stop at the sign. A very nice woman saw me trying to take a self portrait of myself and Chance and she got back out of her car to take the picture for us. Thanks to her for helping us get this nice picture of the two of us.
From there we paid the entrance fee and entered the park. I had been the Yellowstone before but I had forgotten how you find the animals until I saw a bunch of cars parked by the side of the road and people with cameras. We had only been in the park a few minutes when we saw our first animals. They were some kind of mountain deer. When Chance saw them he got all excited, pointing and counting them.
After this stop we went to the first visitor's center we came to in the park, which was surrounded by a herd of Elk so we had to wait in the car for a few minutes and be careful as we walked across the parking lot. Inside I told the guide we only had a few hours but I would like to see geysers and buffalo. Of course they couldn't pinpoint where the buffalo would be but they told me where they had been grazing recently and pointed us to geysers that were close by.
When we arrived at the geyser location another very helpful forest ranger helped us choose which trail to take to have the best shot at seeing a geyser erupt. I love forest rangers, a forest ranger is one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up but it isn't the easiest profession to get into so that never really panned out but I love their job, it just fascinates me, and think about it have you ever met a mean forest ranger? They love what they do and it shows.
Anyway we walked down the trail to a whole field of geysers, they had built boardwalks just inches above the ground because they whole area is thermal. We were able to see super heated pools of water and geysers shoot up 10 - 20 feet in the air. Chance liked walking on the trails, he kept asking to go swimming, he didn't quite understand how hot it was. He was really interested in the water shooting in the air and seeing the steam come out of the holes. We could also see lots of bubbles coming up from the Earth. It was really cool.
Continuing on our drive around the park Chance fell asleep and I saw some deer and some other pretty sights. I had told Chance that I would wake him up if I saw any really cool animals so when we came upon a herd of Buffalo in the road I had to wake him up. At first he wasn't interested but as soon as he saw how big and how close they were he woke right up. He was really animated pointing them out and listening to the funny noises they make. We were stuck there for a while as the buffalo moved across the street. The Buffalo in this picture was right in front of our car.
The road we took to exit the park and take us on to Billings is #212 a little mountain road that is known for it's beautiful views. It twisted, it turned, winding around mountain cliffs up to 7,000 feet above sea level. It was absolutely beautiful! As we drove along we were getting up to where we could see snow on the mountain tops around us, Chance spotted it and I told him we would stop if I saw any close enough for us to play in, not two minutes later we came around a corner to a whole pile of snow and a place to easily pull over. We got out of the car, made some snowballs and played in the snow for a bit before heading off to Billings.
We made it to the Airport just in time to pick up Scott and head to the hotel where we were all very happy to relax and get some sleep.
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