A Yellowstone Day

In spite of the fact I should have spent the day quilting, it was just too gorgeous a day to stay inside.  Michael suggested we put the top down and take a drive over to Yellowstone.  I packed a picnic and off we went.

First was a stop at Nat’s.  He called this morning, his TV died.  We had an older Sharp TV we weren’t using so he drove up and we loaded the heavy old thing into his truck.  The stop in town was to get the heavy old thing out of his truck, into the house and working with his cable—success—now we are really off to Yellowstone.

We were getting hungry about 2pm and stopped at a fishing access along the Yellowstone River and ate our lunch.  The view was beautiful and the sun warm.

What a wonderful, wonderful day!  When we reached the north entrance gate, the park ranger told us we didn’t even need to get out our senior pass—the fee was waived all week for everyone—entry was free!  We have been in the park so many times it is impossible to count—my first time was when I was 17 years old, Michael’s was at a much earlier age as he lived near the park all his life.  Usually no matter what month or day you go the traffic and people are unbearable.  Today, there was no one in the park, very few vehicles and very few people.  All the roads are not open yet but we could have driven to Old Faithful if we had chosen to.

On Labor Day last year my sister and her husband were visiting, it was also my birthday and we drove over to the park to meet my Mom and Chuck for a picnic.  We sat at a table just to the right of where the above photo was taken—we had trouble finding a parking place or a picnic table and people were swarming everywhere—not today!  It was wonderful!

We got into a different sort of traffic jam, buffalo on the road—meeting buffalo on the road in an open top car is almost as scary as meeting them on a motorcycle.  Emmi didn’t know what to think about those big ole shaggy critters!

  

See, there was really no one there, in the photo above you can see the hotel and the restaurant around which there are usually hundreds of people, not today—have I said it was wonderful??

There was still some snow around, this is a shot of the Mammoth Hot Springs terraces with just a little bit of steam in the top middle of the photo.

An absolutely perfect day.  Home about 6pm and relaxing, life is good.