Alaskan RV Adventure: 05/29/16

28 May - Yellowstone - Day three

Happy Birthday to me (and what a great one it was)

     After wearing ourselves out yesterday we declared an easy day and planned to be back to camp around 5:00 P.M., well at least that was the plan and at least we had a plan.

     We set out this morning to go to the town of West Yellowstone.....just out the west gate of the park to have a look around and explore the roads/attractions between here and there (in the park) that we hadn't done yet. After that short day we would stop by Old Faithful if time allowed and we could still get home early.

     We stopped at a beautiful waterfall (Gibbons Falls) that required minimal hiking and took photos of that. We stopped in the Madison area and inquired about a day hike in that area but the ranger suggested better hikes were in the other areas.

     So we promptly moved on to the West entrance and headed out to the town of West Yellowstone. The time was probably nearing noon by then but we had packed a lunch so we're good. As we head out the gate we notice an unbelievable line of traffic waiting to get in. It was backed up bumper to bumper from the gate into the town (maybe a mile or two) and actually blocked streets in the town also. We knew we had made a mistake leaving the park and were not ready to wait in that line to return.

     Plan B - Our neighbors and good friends Tom and Kay Lindgren (he's from Montana) had mentioned that we may want to ride up to Big Sky Montana through the Gallatin Canyon if we had free time and guess what, that was north of West Yellowstone.... so away we went. A nice drive to a beautiful community with the Big Sky ski resort on the nearby mountains. We had a good look around and found a nice pub to have lunch....after all it's my birthday. You guessed it, the picnic lunch was now our dinner tonight.

     By the time we returned there was no line to get in the park and we drove traffic free to Old Faithful which was on the way home. It is now nearing 5:45 and she is not set to perform again until 6:27 +/- 10 minutes. Yep, she performed for us at about 6:45 and it was pretty impressive. Still quite a ways from Fishing Bridge we headed home and arrived at 8:30 and enjoyed hot dogs that had been kept hot in a thermos all day.

     We have now hit the highlights of "most" of Yellowstone....with one area remaining. We've decided to take a break from Yellowstone and drive down to the Grand Teton National Park and spend the day tomorrow and pick back up on Yellowstone the next day.

29 May - Day Trip to Grand Teton National Park

     We set out on what we expected to be a pretty long day...gonna drive to Grand Teton, the town of Jackson Hole and see what we could in a day and return. Jackson Hole was 100 miles away and the park was closer but included a lot of territory between park entrance and Jackson Hole.

     Yellowstone is beautiful, but Grand Teton is also beautiful in a different way. The mountains here looked different....they had the rough looking peaks that were majestic (see the photos). We had seen many more animals in Yellowstone than we did in Teton but both parks were very impressive.

     We toured the park and stopped at many/most of the attractions. We went all the way to the south side of the park and into the town of Jackson Hole.....that has been on my bucket list for some time and I was not disappointed. We had a snack and a cool beverage at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. Would like to have been there for the evening entertainment but was not to be on this trip.

     We walked around the town square and had a good look at the town. Some entertainers were setting up to perform on the square. We thought it was going to be a native American performance...but on closer inspection of the costumes we were not sure. When the music started we were really not sure.....it was definitely not native American, I thought it was some kinda Cajun Mardi Gras thing but not sure and it didn't seem to fit to us.

     After looking at the town we found the "Mormon Row" settlement area to take photos of the famous barn with the mountain peaks in the background. One of the park rangers said this is the most photographed building in the world. Light wasn't real good but we gave it our best shot then hit the road back to camp.

     Turned out to be our earliest night since we've been here :-)
     Some photos from the two days posted below.