Now somehow from Oregon we needed to make it to Yellowstone National Park in order to get Scotty close enough to home to make it back for his wedding. This meant a day where we drove 1200km only stopping for gas and food. It sounds painful, but with the RV, changing scenery, and rotating drivers it was actually not that bad. The different landscapes we went through varied from desert to mountains to ranchland so that kept it interesting at least. We got into Jackson, Wyoming late that night and rested up for a day full of geological mysteries.
Once we woke up we began the small journey into Yellowstone, which can be described only as otherworldly. All of the sudden there were peculiar rock formations, hot pools, bubbling mud pots, and sulfur steam vents all over the place. It’s hard to do it justice and hard to describe without someone actually seeing it. All I can say is that I have never seen things like this anywhere else and I felt at times I was on a different planet. People seemed to be very excited by Old Faithful, but I found that the least exciting part of this whole national park… here are my Yellowstone National Park highlights:
I later read that all of this is due to the fact that the continental divide runs diagonally through Yellowstone. This creates all of the wonderful and magical phenomena that Yellowstone is known for.
We also wandered on over to see the Yellowstone “grand canyon” which is essentially a massive canyon with a beautiful waterfall. Quite grand, and it is just down stream from the Yellowstone falls on the Yellowstone river.
Scotty was not feeling good this day so we made a quick drive to spend the night in Great Falls, Montana to be within striking distance of home and to get Scott back in time for his wedding (hopefully Carmen won’t be too angry that he is now sick and heavily bearded).
All in all I would say it was a great trip and I would highly recommend a West Coast or Northwest road trip to anyone who is up for a little adventure and wants to see some of the greatest landscapes the US has to offer. The only thing I wish we would have seen is Crater Lake, but unfortunately we did not have time to make it over there…
BEAUTIFUL views…