Yellowstone National Park, WY

After a brief shopping trip to buy some more warm clothes we left Idaho Falls and began our drive to Yellowstone National Park where we would stay in a Frontier cabin at Lake Yellowstone. The morning was cold and crisp and we drove through some beautiful countryside. We stopped for a picnic lunch at Island Park State Park, ID and it was the coldest al fresco lunch we have ever had. We drove through Montana for about 10 miles, stopping in West Yellowstone, a really Wild West cowboy town for a warming cup of coffee. All that was missing were the cowboys' horses tethered outside the saloon!

We reached the Park about three o'clock and as we were driving along we had to stop to allow a mother black bear and her two cubs cross the road. It was an amazing sight.

Mother bear and cubs crossing the road in front of us

Yellowstone was America's first National Park, opened in 1872. It has over half the world's geysers, the world's largest high-altitude lake (7735 feet), rivers and waterfalls all sitting on a super volcano. It has an abundance of wildlife including grizzlies, black bears, moose, mule deer, wolves, coyotes, yellow-bellied marmots and a variety of birds.

Again it is difficult to describe in words the beauty of the Park so here are some photos to show what we saw during our time in Yellowstone. It was more wintry than autumnal with snow on the mountains and to the sides of the recently snow-ploughed roads.

Bison resting in our car park

The Grand Prismatic Spring
(The largest hot spring in the USA - temp 160F)

Life and death side by side

Posing with her chilly friends!

A mule deer

Lewis Falls

Old Faithful

Black Sand Basin

If you want to find out more about the Park you should go to www.nps.gov/yell

We left Yellowstone on Tuesday morning and headed south to Jackson, WY.

Comments

Holbrook, AZ to Peach Springs, AZ

We left Holbrook in bright sunshine and continued our drive along Rte 66 which once again had us driving on the Interstate at times. Our first stop was in Winslow made famous when The Eagles recorded "Take It Easy" whose second verse starts with "Standin' on a corner in Winslow Arizona". We then drove on to Flagstaff but didn't stop in the city. Flagstaff has a beautiful forested location high up on the Colorado Plateau and it was a change to be driving on roads lined with tall ponderosa pine trees. We had a picnic lunch off the beaten track in Buckskinner Park, Williams, AZ. We followed a dirt trail to the picnic area which really tested our car's tyres. They survived, thankfully. We soon found ourselves in Seligman (pronounced Sligman), a sleepy town which maintains a lot of its historic character together with a few unexpected twists - eg Santa in a Chevvy outside the wacky Snow Cap Drive-in. Our destination for the night was th...

Seattle, WA

We left Everett on Sunday morning and headed south to Seattle, our final stop on this trip. We drove to our hotel and dropped off our cases before we headed to SeaTac to return our car. After the brief stop at the hotel we drove to Kubota Garden, a 20-acre Japanese garden in one of Seattle’s southern neighbourhoods. It was started in 1927 by Fijitaro Kubota, a Japanese immigrant. It is an urban oasis with Japanese and native trees and plants, ponds and waterfalls. It was beautiful with its fall colours. The following morning we headed down to the waterfront to the historic Pike Place Market where Starbucks first opened its doors to the public in 1971. Then we wandered through the market which opened in 1907 and strolled by the numerous stalls of seafood, fresh produce, crafts and flowers. On Tuesday we took the monorail, which was the first commercial monorail in the USA and built in 1962 as an attraction for the 1962 World’s Fair. It still uses the ...

Amarillo, Texas to Tucumcari, New Mexico

We packed up after breakfast and continued our drive through Texas. Our first stop was at a ranch. Usually one expects to see horses at a ranch but this one was home to a row of half-buried Cadillacs! It was the idea of a controversial millionaire, Stanley Marsh from Amarillo. He said he created it as tribute to the golden age of car travel!! Visitors are encouraged to leave their mark by spray painting their names, comments etc. on the cars. We soon reached Vega, another small town with lots of Rte 66 treasures including a restored 1920s Magnolia gas station and the Milburn-Price Museum in what was previously the town bus station. Miss Karen, the owner told us lots of interesting stories about the museum pieces which were all donated by local families. Outside the museum there was a beautifully restored 1923 Model T Ford. We reached Adrian, TX which marks the mid point of the Route - 1139 miles east to Chicago and 1139 miles to Santa Monica, Los Angel...

On the Road with T and S

Search This Blog