Day 6: Yellowstoned- From Zero to Hero

 Mile: 1300

We wake up bright and early to hit the road. We started with our hotel's continental breakfast. The dining area was playing some type of jungle/ Native American tribe music. It made me feel like we were going on safari rather than the friendly park Yogi Bear inhabited.

Armed with our Yellowstone guide, we left Cody WY at 7am. We drive through the beautiful and scenic Buffalo Bill Park on our way to the East entrance at Yellowstone.

View of Lake in Buffalo Bill Park

Strange House Right Outside of Yellowstone

James was so excited, he wore this silly grin the whole drive to Yellowstone. Ironically, I wore the same grin, but it was more because I was nervous about what type of wildlife we would encounter this time.

Mile 1345: Entering Yellowstone

The park ranger handed us this on the way in...I considered doing a quick check of James' life insurance policy to make sure it included 'bear mauling'.

The picture on this is priceless.


We checked out the fishing bridge as our first stop (people used to fish off of the bridge in the 70's, but it is no longer permitted). 

View from fishing bridge. It was fine. Nothing too exciting.

There was some nice scenery along the way.

Nice scenery... not as good as Bighorn


At this point, we were feeling like Yellowstone was a little lackluster compared to the other parks we had been  to.  I wasn't really understanding the hype. This place was teaming with tourists... the Badlands and Bighorn were practically empty. I didn't get it. We kept going in hopes of discovering the secrets of Yellowstone. And then...

Holy Crap! Buffalo were charging towards us. Something from the other direction must have scared them. The video below is rated PG13 for bad language

After making it out of the charging buffalo herd alive, our second stop was the falls. They were supposed to be amazing.  It  was nice.

A closer look at the falls.

The Falls from the Scenic Overlook

James and I hiked down for a closer look at the falls. Another self-portrait

Still not connecting with Yellowstone as much as we had with the other parks, we start to head to the lower loop to  have lunch and see Old Faithful. On the way, we were able to catch some of the thermal activity. That was really cool. This video is rated G

Mile 1449: Old Faithful

Finally we hit Old Faithful. It erupts every 80-90 minutes; hence the name. It was pretty spectacular and definitely worth fighting the crowd. There is a 20 minute window on when they expect it to erupt. 

James watching in anticipation

James and I take another picture of ourselves. in front of Old Faithful before  it erupts... getting sunburn. 

Old Faithful just getting started

Old Faithful at full blast

Settling down. The geyser went off for about 4 minutes. It was amazing.

We were able to get a peek of this elk having a snack on the side of the road

Now we are starting to understand Yellowstone. The highlight is definitely the thermal activity. We stopped at various geysers on the rest of the lower loop. I've never seen anything like it.

If you look closely you can see the steam coming off of the pool. It is boiling water. 

This one was called Artists Pot. 

The steam from this one kept fogging up our sunglasses

This one is the Grand Prismatic. The orange/ red color is bacteria. The colors were  beautiful

It was getting late and we were exhausted. It was time to head out of the park and into civilization. Tomorrow: Big Sky, MT

Day 5: Trouts and Toes

No travel today, as Kate and I indulged some of our favorite pastimes: fly fishing and getting pedicures.  Not together, of course.  

I'll skip showing you pics of Kate's pedicure, although the 'nail technician' did have some colorful quotes.  Among other things, she told a story about how they keep catching grizzlies and moving them down to Jackson Hole, and Jackson Hole catches and releases the same bears in Yellowstone, then they end up back in Cody.  She called this "trading troubled bears".

I headed out with Rick of Northfork Anglers on the north fork of the Shoshone River, about halfway between Cody and Yellowstone.  We had company during the trip

These are apparently the tracks of a smaller grizzly

Rick kept referring to a grizzly as a 'griz', which made me wonder what DotCom's tracks would look like.  I had a good day fishing, and learned some stuff on a beautiful stretch of river.

Nice little Rainbow Trout

14" Cutthroat Trout.  It's a really big net.

15" 'Cuttbow', a Rainbow /Cutthroat hybrid

Cutthroats are the native local trout.  Years ago, Rainbows were stocked there (they are really only native to the Pacific Northwest). The Cuttbow is a mix of these two fish.

Rick was awesome, except that he really wanted me catch a huge fish, and I was pretty excited about the 'average' fish I was catching.

We kind of took it easy for the rest of the day.  We did check out Old West town, a collection of old building from Wyoming and Montana including a saloon where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hung out, as well as their cabin.

Wild west town

Dinner was at Cassie's, the local roadhouse.  

Cassie's honky-tonk dancefloor

Buffalo Ribs (we're just not good food bloggers)

A nice local (Montana) IPA

There were dance lessons at Cassie's.  While we agreed with the instructor that line dancing was lame, he politely declined to teach us anything about breakdancing.  We went back to our deck early to watch the sunset, but it was strangely obscured by the smoke from a wildfire in Idaho.  Unfortunately, we don't have any good shots of this.

Tomorrow: Yellowstone

Day 4: Out of nature, into... Wyoming

Incidentally, we are terrible food bloggers.  About 80% of the time, we are about 5 bites in when one of us says "Crap, we should have taken a picture of that meal".  But enough of that...

Yesterday evening, we cruised through the Black Hills of South Dakota,

Black Hills

Hole carved into Black Hills

A storm coming over the mountains

until we arrived at South Dakota's Custer State Park.  As you can imagine, we were thrilled to hear, as we paid our entrance fee, 'Wildlife Alert!!! The herd of buffalos has been spotted at about mile post 4!'  Thank goodness our hotel was at mile post 3.

Mile 890: State Game Lodge

I caught a small fish on the stocked stream, but the real highlight of the Game Lodge was revenge on the buffaloes.

Bison Short Rib appetizer

Unfortunately, we didn't have the last laugh...

Leaving the State Game Lodge

We saw some more more wildlife on the way out of the park, including this tiny deer (or fawn) cross the road in front of us 

Mile 936:  Finally, a new state

OMG South Dakota lasted forever....

Not much else happened until I got excited thinking we were seeing the Rocky Mountains.

Mile 1067:  Mountains loom

NOT the Rockies

Turns out this was the Bighorn Range.  Ever heard of that?  Me neither.  But they are way underrated. The Bighorn National Forest was the most spectacular scenery we have seen so far.

Bighorn Range

Shell Falls

Shell Creek at the top of one of the Bighorn Mountains

Mile 1202: Town of Shell, Wyoming, pop. 50 (the sign says 83--don't believe it)

After Shell Falls, Shell Creek runs into Shell.  Here we stopped because we saw this place

The aptly named Antler Inn

After a beer with the proprietor, a hunting outfitter and guide whose trophies from his various exploits lined the walls and were for sale out front, we moved on.

Again, not much happened for the next 70 miles or so.

Mile 1267: Cody, WY, The town that Buffalo Bill built.

Cody was built, basically from nothing, by the promotion and effort of Buffalo Bill Cody.  When we arrived at our hotel, The Cody, at which point Kate finally exhaled, having returned to some semblance of civilization.  The Cody is indeed nice.

Dinner was at The Irma, in a (different) hotel, founded by Buffalo Bill himself.

Yeah, I know it's not a food picture.  It's the best we can do.

The bar was a gift from Queen somebody of England to Bill

Dinner was good--turns out Wyoming steak is good, but it can't touch the Tornado Room.  We ended the day with sunset on the balcony of our room at the Cody, accompanied by the soothing sound of the huge rodeo next door.

Note the rodeo arena in the foreground

Tomorrow: Trouts and Toes

Day 3: Wildlife at Large

Day 3: Mile 710, Kadoka, SD

After google maps led us astray, we found our hotel in Kadoka SD. It’s a tiny town of about 650 people. While clean, our hotel made me a little nervous… especially since our door didn’t seem to close all the way. Needing a beer/ wine/ whatever was available (you would too if you have seen the movie Vacancy), we made our way outside to find food and beverage. We were accosted by an elderly couple from Arkansas who insisted we go to Club 27 for the prime rib special. With no other recommendations …

This “restaurant” was the only one in sight

We took the couple’s advice.  Dinner was great.  We were among the limited number of guests not wearing cowboy hats.

James tried the local beer.

After loading up with gas, we woke up early this morning to head out on our Badlands/ Mount Rushmore Adventure.

Gas Station Picture

Mile 750: Badlands National Park

Beautiful scenery as far as the eyes could see. We stop at the first scenic overlook.

This is my first picture after getting out of the car. I was scared. James said “don’t worry, a lot more people are injured by buffalo each year than by rattlesnakes.” Phew! Later you will need to note this as the literary tool known as foreshadowing.

Here is where the trip gets interesting. We begin to encounter a variety of wildlife (please note the title of this post. Another example of foreshadowing).

These mule deer jolted out in front of us. Good thing I was driving like a Grandma.

Big horned sheep crossing the road 

OMG! Buffalo in the field. We were so excited to see a wild buffalo. We thought this was the coolest thing ever. We were careful not to get too close as they can charge if they get scared. The park rangers recommend staying 100 feet away.

Mile 786: Robert’s Prairie Dog Town

We then looped around to Robert’s Prairie Dog Town. I wasn’t really sure where we were going, but James really wanted to stop there. I thought it was some kind of themed attraction. We aren’t always the best at communicating. It was a large prairie filled with prairie dogs.

These are prairie dogs. They were everywhere  

As we were driving out of prairie dog town, we saw a big fox.

After all the nature and excitement, we were starving. We decided to head to Rapid City (the 2^nd biggest city in SD) for lunch. It was only to be a 5 mile drive on the dirt road before we hit a highway. We were expecting to be in Rapid City in just about 45 minutes. Until… the buffalo decided they wanted to share the road.

They just hung out on the road… and looked around… and sat there… and… I had to eat a granola bar. They were not planning to move … ever. See video below. If you only have time for one video. Skip to the 2nd. They are big files, so you may not be able to view from your mobile device. 

So, James put the 4runner to work and we off-roaded around the buffalo. It was scary.

We were relieved  the adventure has passed.  Only a 20 minute delay and we were back on the dirt road that would lead us to the highway that would take us to Rapid City. Until… ANOTHER herd of buffalo decided to share the road. Check out out youtube link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU78YmsT-Ds&feature=youtu.be

We are going to starve to death. They just kept coming on the road.

Once we passed the buffalo, we were back on our way to lunch. It was just another 20 minute delay.

We passed this really interesting river that looked like coffee with cream. 

More dirt road

Finally we hit the highway!

Mile 819: Random Dinosaur

Not sure what this dinosaur was about 

Mile 819: Rapid City

Ahhh. Civilization. We stopped for lunch at a place called Philly Ted’s Cheezsteaks. It’s no Geno’s, Pat’s or Jim’s, but it was quite delicious.

Lunch at Philly Ted's

Coming back from lunch, we noticed the dirt attached to the car as a result of our off roading adventure with the buffalo

Mile 875: Mount Rushmore

Mount Rushmore seems like the Times Square of South Dakota. The few miles leading up to the Memorial, the parking lot, the entrance, are all teaming with tourists and cheesy attractions.

Tourist City as we head into the Mount Rushmore Memorial  

Mount Rushmore

We took our photographs and quickly departed from the site. It is only a 45 minute drive to our next stop… Custer State Park.  More to come on Custer State Park tomorrow.