Yellowstone National Park

Yesterday we headed to Montana (big sky country) to go to Painter's Outpost for our "camping" experience. LOL I'm used to Girl Scout camping. Camping in soft sided tents, using latrines, fire for heat, sleeping bags, that kind of camping. This camping had bunk beds, baseboard heaters, hot showers, flushing toilets and coffeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Yes, they had decaf too, just for me. LOL

When Cruella was explaining the cabins to me, she kept saying how low key and rustic they were. Oh. My. God. They were heaven. I could actually LIVE in one if the chance ever occured! Granted, there was a chamber pot in the event of an emergency (the shower house was about 30 yards away) but who gives a crap? We were in the middle of Shoshone National Forest, there were animals everywhere, we were next to a beautiful stream...... need I continue?

We drove through Dead Indian Pass on our way to the cabin. The closest town was Cooke City, MT, and that was a really cool town! You can ride ATV's on the streets in Cooke City! That is heaven to my dear husband. Every ATV he saw on the road or parked at a business got a scowl and a few choice words. LOL We entered Yellowstone (the park) Tuesday through the Northeast Entrance through the Lamar Valley, Tower-Roosevelt and Blacktail Deer Plateau and went over to Mammoth Hot Springs where we saw a herd of elk, cows and calves, eating the grass in a camp site, there were probably 25 head in the herd and they were talking back and forth, we could hear the mommas talking to their babies, it was so precious. MWH really got a kick out of it!! Hell, I really got a kick out of it! Then in the center of Mammoth, ther were 4 other elk just lounging around on the grass. Two over by some houses and two more over in a grassy noel by the road. There was this little girl standing outside her house just watching them. Cruella walked over to take pictures and struck up a conversation with the little girl. She didn't care about the elk, she just wanted someone to play with. LOL Kids..... One of the elk was a spike bull elk, he was good sized but his rack was pretty small. We were within about 25 yards of them, that's truly amazing. Mammoth is near Gardiner, MT, so we headed out of the park and got some ice cream and hit the stores. I like Gardiner, it's a very cute little stop, the stores there are old and rustic and they have the kind of floors that creak when you walk on them. Teddy Roosevelt himself may have walked in those very stores I was in, history is so cool.

It was about dark so we headed back to the cabin (the same route only backwards) for the night. I loved the little cabin, I wish I had one in my back yard!

We got back up this morning and headed back into the park, this time heading south at Tower-Roosevelt towards Dunraven Pass and Canyon Village. Along that stretch we saw a cow moose and her calf, that was a fantastic find! There are only 400 moose in the park and we saw 2 of them! They were so beautiful...... I love moose. At Canyon Village they built a new visitors center and it was way cool! There is a sizemograph (sp?) there that shows the volcanic (or is it geothermal?) activity there at the park. There was some activity near Madison and Norris that morning just an hour or so before we got there! Can you imagine Yellowstone erupting while we were there? We'd all die, it's that simple. All of Oklahoma would see the ash from the eruption..... That volcano is huge. Period. Fucking huge. Upstairs there was a stuffed bison with a calf and MWH really liked that exhibit. She loves seeing the animals, dead or alive. LOL I like the mounts because you can see them close up and not worry about them charging you or anything. After Canyon Village we headed west towards Norris and Madison and out the West Entrance to West Yellowstone. West Yellowstone is near the Idaho state line and it's a beautiful town, we didn't get to do too much exploring since we had to be out of the East Entrance (towards Cody) by 8:00. We headed back to Madison and down towards Old Faithful (it wasn't erupting right then so we went on in search of bear) and did the whole lower loop through West Thumb and up to Yellowstone Lake (enormous and simply breathtaking) and Lake Village and up to Fishing Bridge for souvenirs and a potty break. We made it through the construction at Sylvan Pass with enough time that we didn't need to worry about getting trapped in the park. There was a bad slide at Sylvan pass a little over a year ago, you can still see the rocks and the work they've done there is incredible! We headed back through Shoshone National Forest towards Cody and made it back to town for dinner at Zapata's. I had the best sour cream chicken enchilada!! I wish our Mexican restaraunts were more like Zapata's. We went back to the Fitzgerald Mansion and we're all ready to crash for the night!