June 30, 2010 Arrive at Yellowstone

We left Montpelier really early in the morning and got to see some great wildlife on our way to Yellowstone. At one point there was an entire heard of cattle in the road meandering as if the road was their field.

We were very excited to get into the entrance of the park. We felt we were finally there. Yellowstone is enormous and has only two lane roads, with no passing lanes. We entered from the south entrance and still had 60 miles to get to our RV park.

We finally got to our park and had prepared ourselves that we were backing into a spot. Not only is it a back in, but it was created in 1960, for Cadillacs pulling Airstream trailers. The front of the truck was in the trees as we were trying to back, and of course we had another person waiting for us to get out of the way. Stressful!!!!

We decided to take a tour to get an idea of where things were located. We chose the Lamar Wildlife Evening tour. This was a 5 hour, 100 mile round trip tour, in a motor coach, led by a gruff man named Peaches. It sounded good until the bus came to pick us up. I was waiting for Gerald's comments as we were walking down the aisle of the hot bus. There was no air conditioning and the windows did not open. In addition, every thrifty parent had chosen this tour because their children were free up to age 7. Needless to say, we were next to an 8 month old that never took a nap. The bus was a 1970's standard transmission that lurched and squealed throughout the park as Peaches ground the gears to find them. It seemed to never end, as we were ready to get off at 3 hours into the tour. We did see the following animals: deer, bison, coyotes and a baby black bear. All of these stops caused "animal jams" where crazy humans jump out of their car in traffic to take pictures. We decided that our own tours were the way to go. Although, we got a really good chuckle when I told Gerald that we are just missing one person on this tour and that is Uncle Gary. We finished the evening walking back to the trailer through the forested area, in the rain with lightning, at 10pm at night. All I could think of is all of the signs saying hard sided trailers only due to bears.