Day 32 & 33 - Yellowstone Experience

We really enjoyed our stay at the Glacier Park Lodge as it was an unexpected treat. We enjoyed a great breakfast buffet in the dining room before heading to the next stop on our itinerary, Yellowstone National Park. We made a decision that we were going to drive straight through to Yellowstone and we did. It was a longer day than we expected, but we made it. We were able to get rooms at the Days Inn in West Yellowstone and would be ready to enter the park in the morning.

The West Yellowstone park entrance was just down the street from the hotel. We showed our passes and headed off hoping we would see the wildlife we have always heard about. It wasn’t long before we pulled off the road to watch Elk grazing. No sooner had we pulled off the road when we saw Jack & Jo pulling into the turn out too. They got an early start from their visit to Glacier National Park yesterday and were able to join us as we toured Yellowstone. Our next stop was to an area where Buffalo were also grazing. Neither of these sightings was large, but they were hopefully representative of what we might see during our visit.







Of course Yellowstone is also famous for its geysers and we saw plenty of them, in all shapes and sizes. We did the typical tourist thing and took the small loops, one of which took us to White Dome Geyser. It looked pretty cool, with its tall cone spewing steam. We were just about ready to leave when it erupted.





The Model A’s gave lots of other visitors some Kodak moments while we visited as many of the geysers, pools and mud pots as we could. We eventually wound up at Old Faithful to see the famous geyser. Needless to say, the parking lot was very crowded, but we did find parking. The new gift shop was a hit with us as we all managed to find something to take home. We did make it to Old Faithful in time to watch the eruption which was deemed “short” by the Park Ranger. It still looked good to us. Dick was experiencing some skipping in the Woody, so the O’Briens went back to the hotel to fix the problem (it turned out to be a broken spark plug). We (Doug & Nan and Jack & Jo) wanted to visit Old Faithful Hotel which was really spectacular. I’m so glad it was spared during the 1988 forest fire. The structure of the hotel was really unique and the lobby is something you have to stand in to appreciate. The Hotel also had some unique items in the gift shop which some how managed to make it into our bags.

Leaving Old Faithful we followed the Lower Loop Road which was going to take us through an area where large amounts of Buffalo were reported. Not only were there buffalo, we also saw more elk and even a BEAR. Yes, a bear! Well, OK so it was a guy dressed in a bear suit. It turned out to be the funniest thing of the day, thanks to Chris Klingel, the ultimate Chicago Bear fan. We would have missed this performance if we hadn’t turned around to take some pictures of Elk on the side of the road.

We left Chris and his bear suit, still laughing, and we soon came upon a large heard of buffalo that were grazing and crossing the street. We had to wait for them to move. Nan was so busy taking pictures that she didn’t see the two buffalo that were right beside her door. Hello! But please go away. Park Rangers soon came to get them moving off the road by using their cruisers PA to make clicking noises that got them moving. We ran into two more of these large herds that caused the same traffic jam. Fortunately we were heading the opposite direction as the line of traffic was very, very long.

Buy the time we got back to West Yellowstone it was 7:30 PM and we met the O’Briens at the Montana Steak House. Tomorrow it would be back to Yellowstone for more sightseeing.