Heading to Yellowstone

I left camp at 4:30 a.m. to try a get a shot of Mt. Moran on a clear day.  It was about a 30 minute drive to the area I wanted to be at but four elk decided to hang out on the highway for a while, right in front of me.  After a couple of other cars stopped to take pictures, the elk took off.  I made it to my area as the other photographers were packing up, missing the sunrise by 15 minutes or so.  Nevertheless, I was determined to get at least one shot of the mountain on a clear day!

Afer returning, we finished packing up and headed up the back road out of Jackson, through Wilson on Highway 22, then up and over the Teton Pass, a 10% uphill and 10% downhill!  We topped off at about 8,600 feet and there was plenty of snow remaining on the northern facing slopes.  We had to let Jason play for a while in the snow bank.  His hands got cold right away (go figure) so Cathy gave him some throwaway running gloves and he was back at it, picking a snowball fight with me.  I would call it a tie.

We went up a trail to a snow bank a little deeper and a whole lot bigger, but when we arrived, it was too steep to play on.  If he fell, he would slide and I didn’t want that happening!  Jason is getting quite adept at finding evidence of elk, though.

Returning to our original roadside snow bank, we made a slide so he could get in some downhill action.  His bottom got cold and by the third run he was ready to come in.    

Jackson is about 2,000 feet down and fifteen miles out in the distance.

After a change of clothes, we continued on, crossing into Idaho and traveling through Victor, Tetonsia, Lamont, Drummond and Ashton before joining back with the “main” route, Highway 20 to West Yellowstone. (Try finding THOSE towns in your tourbook!)  We came to abrupt stop in our MH as we entered Montana due to four deer standing in the roadway. It rearanged some of our loose items onboard but we did manage to bring the beast to a pretty quick stop.  Jason was very excited to see the large, mule deer “first”, he is such a competitor!

Upon check-in at West Yellowstone, we discovered that we mistakenly left Jackson a day early and did not have reservations at our campgound until June 4th, so we had to backtrack about ten miles to find a place to camp for the evening.  We will move into West Yellowstone for a six night stay starting TOMORROW.  I am still trying to blame someone else for this mistake.

We did do the tourist thing and visited as many of the tee-shirt shops that we could stomach in West Yellowstone.  Boy, this town has changed since we were last here, more than 15 years ago.  We stopped at the Madison river and Jason immediately began throwing rocks into and across the water.   He shows no favoritism, chucking rocks into a blue chip, trophy trout river such as the Madison!

We will be changing campsites first thing in the morning then heading off to Mammoth Hot Springs/Gardiner/Yellowstone Falls for our first day in the park.  Jason really wants to see a bison close up and will probably also see a herd of elk at the Hot Springs.  We have to retire early tonight as they have warned us of bears in the immediate area.