Our one-night stay in the city campground in Drummond, Montana, was loud. It sounded like the trains were going right through our trailer several times during the night. We were glad we weren't planning to stay any longer! This was the third one-night stay in a row, something very unusual for us. Because we didn't unhook the pickup for this short stop, it was a fast departure the next morning. We were on the road at 8:00 a.m. for our long drive. Google maps estimated a five hour drive to today's destination, but that was based on driving 80 miles per hour on I-80. Our preferred speed towing the trailer in the mountains was 60 miles per hour.
The further we drove away from the Windy Rock fire, the bluer the skies were. We liked this section of I-80 with four smooth lanes and very little traffic. Our path took us down some long 6% grades where passenger cars were limited to 70 miles per hour, but trucks weren't supposed to exceed 25 miles per hour in these sections.
Our destination today was Yellowstone National Park. We've been there several times in our travels, but we've never been able to camp inside the park because our motor home was too big and needed electrical hook-ups. Last night we were able to reserve a one-night stay in the center of the national park--one of the advantages of traveling with our little trailer with solar! Even though the smoke forecast said that Yellowstone was clear, we found the mountains shrouded in smoke as we approached the north entrance of the park.
We also started seeing wildlife as we got closer. We spotted antelope, two eagles, and ten elk. These three elk were resting in the sage brush in the middle of the day.
We also crossed the state line into Wyoming this morning. This was our eleventh state on this journey! This was the first time we had ever entered through the Gardiner gate into Yellowstone National Park. Even though it is one of the most visited national parks in the country, there was no line and no reservations needed at this north entrance in the middle of the afternoon.
We had never seen the Roosevelt Gate, just inside the north park entrance. We took a picture as we drove by because finding a parking spot big enough for the pickup and trailer inside a national park was almost impossible.
That's why we drove right by the travertine formations on the north side of Yellowstone. Driving through these crowded areas on a pretty day in August towing a trailer was a little tricky.
Even though we were already inside the national park, we still had a 90-minute drive to get to our campground in the center. We've mentioned it many times before, but some of our national parks are huge! We spotted one deer and 2 bison close to the road. We saw dozens more bison in the distance as we drove through Hayden Valley. When we plotted our route home across the country, we found that driving through Yellowstone was actually the shortest route in miles. It was not the fastest route, however, because of the 35-45 mile per hour speed limits inside the park. But with beautiful natural landscapes and animal sightings, it was a great route for us.
We arrived at Bridge Bay Campground in the center of the park in the middle of the afternoon, and got the trailer set up. We'll talk more about that fiasco at the end of the blog. Instead of staying around the campground, we jumped back into the pickup at 4:15 and started exploring the park. We made a stop at West Thumb Geyser Basin, where we parked and made the walk around the geothermal attractions. Our favorites were "The Abyss" . . .
and "The Black Pool." Even with such sinister names, both were delightful shades of turquoise. But through the clear steaming water we could see the bottomless crater beneath.
This boardwalk was right beside Yellowstone Lake, where a large flock of ducks was trolling together near the shore.
We watched as the leaders dove under the water, and the whole flock followed and flipped down in some natural version of a synchronized swimming routine.
We also made a stop at the Kepler Cascades. Most day visitors had left the national park by this time, and we had the viewpoint all to ourselves. That's one advantage to camping inside the park that we've never gotten to experience before.
We were on a bit of a schedule, as we were headed to Old Faithful next, with a scheduled eruption time at 6:32. We arrived around 6:00, surprised to see that all the benches around the perimeter were full even at this time of the evening.
The local birds knew that the visitors waiting for the show were probably snacking, and they were quite bold to check out the food options.
The 6:32 estimate had a qualifier. Old Faithful was faithful, but that estimate comes with a +/- ten minute qualifier. We got a teaser at 6:30, but the full geyser show actually started at 6:33.
It's hard to take a picture that shows just how tall the water sprays into the air. But the whole crowd hushed as we all watched another of God's wonders in this wonderful place.
We filled up with some $3.99-per-gallon gas at the gas station in the Old Faithful complex, and then headed down the road for another highlight. We've seen most of these things many times before, but how can you be so close and not feast on some of the best natural landscape in the country? We paused only for a moment to take another bison picture on our way, because we were losing daylight.
It was over an hour's drive and we ran out of daylight. We did spot three bison, but it was dark by the time we got to Hayden Valley. We were disappointed to see that people were just leaving after a bear sighting. A big group was still talking about watching a grizzly in the water, and another group watched the wolves for the third night in a row in the same place. We missed all that fun, but we did see the herd of elk that hang out at Bay Bridge Campground. They were our welcoming committee when we drove back to the trailer at 9:00. Mark had been driving for most of 13 hours this day, and he was tired. We walked several loops inside the national park today, and managed to get 6.3 miles of exercise today.
We have to have a little rant about our national park camp site that might be helpful to others making a trip to Yellowstone. We were delighted to find a one-night opening, but surprised at the $42 price for a no-hook-up camp site. On the Zanterra web site, it didn't give us any opportunity to put in our senior pass number for the half-price discount. We found out quite by accident that you can get that discount only if you ask for it when you arrive. Our camping spot was literally a wide place on the side of the campground road. It was one of the worst sites we have ever had in our ten years of extensive camping. We had to come in backwards, or our steps and door would have been in the middle of the road. It was so angled that we used four leveling blocks, and we were still a bubble off level. Driving through the campground at 9 p.m., we assumed everyone was checked in. But at least 25% of the sites were vacant. Some sites were much better than ours, and we probably should have requested a different site if we only knew that so many were going to be unused. Having unused camp sites in the middle of such a beautiful place seems a shame.
