| Miles | MPG | Avg. Speed | |
| Today | 616 | 46.3 | 45 |
| Trip | 6896 | 46.7 | 48 |
|
Food |
Hotel |
Trip Savings |
| $10 / $157 | $179 / $75 |
AAA – $46 |
Spending the night in West Yellowstone instead of driving back to Bozeman was well worth the cost. Instead of getting up this morning and facing a 90-minute drive to the park entrance, we were there in just a few minutes. That meant a little extra sleep and an earlier start.
Just inside the park, we came across some elk who had bedded down for the night.
After that, we moved on to the thermal features.
And found a waterfall before heading for Old Faithful.
After Old Faithful, we drove along Yellowstone Lake and found some bull elk in the woods beside the road.
Some geese.
And another elk with people getting way to close to him.
As more people arrived to look at him, some of them left the road and walked down to the lake behind him on either side. We drove back to the previous elk to let the ranger there know that this one was getting surrounded and people were moving in on it, but the ranger had moved on.
The people just don’t think. They pull over and block the highway, stop and stand in the middle of the road. They just don’t use any common sense at all.
We stopped at some more thermal features, but either the droughts have dried some of them up or the ones I remember were in a different park.
Back on the road, I mentioned that I was surprised we hadn’t seen more bison.
We didn’t stop for better pictures, because the herds were pretty far away across the large meadows. I tried saying, “I’m surprised we haven’t seen more grizzly”, but it didn’t work. 
We climbed back into the mountains and came to the northeast entrance. The original play had been to leave via the east entrance, toward Cody. Then in the morning I’d played with Mapquest and found that circling all the way around to Mammoth, where we’d entered and driven to the west entrance yesterday, would only add 20-minutes to the drive, because we could pick up the interstate.
After the stops we’d made already, though, I decided to try the northeast entrance instead of driving further west to Mammoth and then straight north for almost an hour, and it turned out to be a good decision.
Along the northeast entrance road, I saw some thing long and low scurry across the road and stopped near where he’d entered the grass. I wasn’t expecting to see anything, thinking whatever it had been would be long-hidden by the time we got there.
But the badger hung around outside his den waiting for us.
After exiting the park, I had a choice of taking 212 northeast to the interstate or 296, Chief Joseph Highway, east to Cody. 296 looked more interesting.
This road wound through canyons and mountains and eventually crossed a river gorge by a bridge that has apparently been used for other activities.
I’m thinking there was some bungees involved.
As we climbed out of the valley, we stopped for a couple more pictures of what we’d just driven through.
As we neared Cody, we were both getting hungry. I didn’t know what size Cody was, but figured they’d have a few places to eat. We saw a billboard as we got close and I teased Aryn, “Well, they have a McDonald’s.”
We got gas and drove through Cody, but didn’t see any place to eat until we were almost out of town. Just before the long stretch of highway with nothing on either side were the golden arches. “Well,” I said, “they have a McDonalds.”
There was also a Subway near the McDonalds, so we ate there. All the local restaurants must be elsewhere in town.
From Cody to Greybull was a pretty blah-drive, but I did get to see some sugar beet fields.
For miles leading into Greybull there were fields on either side of the road. One acre on the left, sometimes two acres deep on the right … behind and between them, desert and sagebrush.
There were some things I’d have liked to stop at if we’d had time. Greybull had an aircraft exhibit and museum of aerial firefighting. We also passed a couple geological sites, including one with fossilized dinosaur footprints – Aryn was sleeping when we passed those and I heard some complaints about not waking her up and stopping there.
Past Greybull, the road rather dramatically entered the bottom of a canyon.
After miles of driving between the steep sides of the canyon, we climbed out and entered miles of national forest land with open range on both sides. No fences and ranchers with grazing rights means that you have to watch for cows near the roadway.
With some nearer than others.
With a little honking, all of them moved aside except for this guy.
He just stood there, as if to say, “Whip ‘em out, boy, and if you come close we’ll talk about who moves.” I drove around.
Just as we were exiting the national forest, we came across moose grazing near the road.
So finally we reached the interstate and headed east toward South Dakota. The sun set while we were still in Wyoming.
Once the sun was fully down, I pulled over and we got out to look at the stars. It was the first night we hadn’t been in a city or the moon hadn’t been full. It was really nice to see the night sky without any light-pollution around.
It was after midnight when we got to Rapid City and a very expensive hotel room because of a forest fire nearby – firefighters were arriving from all over the country.
