I had never been to Yellowstone. For having been to over 50 countries and most of our United States, my friends could not understand how I could have missed going to Yellowstone before the age of 75.
Usually traveling by air, we had not taken a long road trip by ourselves for a few years and did not know if the trip would be wearing on us. It was not and we loved taking in the scenery along the way. Although we booked our hotel months ahead of time, we could not find, what we consider, affordable accommodations within the park so we had to settle for a motel, overly priced, about 33 miles from the eastern entrance to the park. We were comfortable there, the breakfast was good, but, were it not that it was one of the few motels within reasonable distance from the park, it would not, and could not, get the prices it demanded.
On our journey toward the park from our home in Minnesota, we chose not to drive more that 6 hours in one day, so we stayed in Jamestown ND the first night and in Glendive Montana the following. Much of how I judge my travels depends on much I like the cafes and restaurants I experience along the way. In Glendive, we ate at the CC Café near our hotel. Here we shared the best Turkey dinner I’ve ever had at a restaurant. Real turkey, home made stuffing and mashed potatoes, Cranberries, a vegetable, all the salad bar and soup we cared for. Total cost? $10.95. That can really empress a cheap guy like me. The meal not only fed us that evening, we took half the meat with us to make sandwiches for the next two days. I’ll remember that experience longer than some other experiences during the trip.
Good fortune was upon us for the next two days, as the predicted thunderstorms that were promised, did not appear until our last day there. We chose to visit Cody Wyoming that rainy day, take an enclosed trolley ride around the area and spend some time in the town’s wonderful Bill Cody Museum. All was good.
Within the Yellowstone park, during our first two days, we saw “Old Faithful” which I naively thought would be about 10 minutes from the parks entrance. It was closer to two hours. I did not account for the many sharp curves or the required slow speeds. Nor did I realize what a large area the park is. We had recently seen the geysers that Iceland had to offer but this was certainly more spectacular than any we viewed in Iceland.
The following day we took a more northerly drive to see the beautiful falls and Roosevelt Tower.
Feeling that we had such an easy drive to Wyoming, we chose to drive 10 hours on our first days journey back home, ending up in Chamberlain SD. The following days drive was easy and we reached home early enough to sit and relax in our solarium, overlooking the wonderful Minnesota Valley Wetlands, with a nice martini in hand. It doesn’t get much better than that.