On to Yellowstone

We chose to take the scenic route to Yellowstone (Hey, why not? A mere 2500 miles to cover in 9 days to get us back to Millis by the 20th). So along Route 89 we went. We traveled the Oregon Trail Bear Lake Scenic Byway and I’m very glad we did. Somewhere, I think in Idaho, we passed by Bear Lake, with its beautiful blue waters, surrounded by mountains. There were restaurants selling burgers, fries and ice cream, bakeries advertising freshly baked goods (lots with raspberries; maybe the local crop?) and stores selling inner tubes and floats. It reminded me a bit of a Cape Cod community but much smaller and without all of the horrible Cape traffic! We stopped for a tailgating lunch in Paris (still in Idaho) and then carried along through Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Snake River ran along beside us for several miles and we enjoyed watching the tubers and kayakers floating down the rapids (which looked a bit more fun than the rapids we encountered along the Colorado in Moab. Snake River Kayak and Canoe which runs out of Jackson Hole seemed to have had a lot of the business floating along the river – we’ll keep that in mind for our next trip out west). We drove through the Grand Tetons, which were absolutely breathtaking. The many peaks form a beautiful jagged skyline. They reached high up in to the sky, so high in fact that some of the peaks were dotted with snow. We finally reached Yellowstone and zigzagged across the Continental Divide before finding ourselves at Old Faithful. We could see her erupting in the distance and would probably have to wait at least another hour or so to see her go again (she averages 90 minutes between eruptions; the wait time depends on how long the eruption lasts. A long blast means a long wait until the next one) so we decided to head on up to Madison Junction, make dinner and set up camp. We would camp one night there and the next at Bridge Bay so in order to save time (and between you and me, save my ass from being bear bait – you’ve been keeping track of the news this summer right?) the kids and I slept in the car which meant we had only 2 tents to put up. Dinner, then straight to bed so we could get an early start the next day.