Trip Journal: Yellowstone Day 3
This evening (naturally on the last day at this hotel) I discovered wireless Internet access. Wee-haw!
Today was our last full day at Yellowstone, and we spent much of it filling in gaps from the earlier two days (and driving around). We saw the Mud Volcano, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and geysers in the Upper Basin, including Old Faithful for the nth time.
The first (brief) stop was at Inspiration Point on the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The vistas were impressive, and I took some nice pictures, but there's only so long you can stare at a giant ditch. Since the main goal was to see the Mud Volcano, we continued on after only a half hour or so.
Our travel plans were delayed for about an hour on the way to the Mud Volcano when the road was closed due to a van whose engine had caught fire. We turned back to Canyon Village and ate lunch. When the road reopened, we drove past the burned-out shell of an old Dodge van--it looked like a picture from a war zone. Fortunately, I don't think anyone was hurt.
As we drove from the Mud Volcano back to the Old Faithful area, we encountered a nice thunderstorm which not only pelted us with rain and small hail, but also cooled the air about thirty degrees. It went from warm to pleasantly cool in just a few minutes, and was still sprinkling a little by the time we stopped. We waited in the van for the rain to end, then watched Old Faithful and went on a 2.5 mile hike around the Upper Geyser Basin. We were fortunate enough to see several geysers erupting, including Grotto and Sawmill. It threatened to thunderstorm on us again for the whole hike, but we stayed dry except for a few sprinkles.
The long hike and the hour-long delay earlier in the day meant that we arrived fairly late back at the hotel. The kids didn't have lights out until almost 10 PM, and we have an early morning tomorrow for the drive to Rapid City.
Bedtimes seem to be getting a little easier, and the trick is separating the kids. The past few nights at least one child has slept on the floor, to separate the troublemakers. Even though a queen size bed will fit all three kids, that arrangement doesn't seem to lead to any actual sleep. We also seem to wind up playing musical beds sometimes, with the kids rearranging themselves a couple times during the night. Last night one of the twins climbed into bed with us, claiming that there were "bugs" in his bed. He seems to have forgotten about that tonight, though, so I suspect it was all a bad dream.
Tomorrow will be a long drive. We've decided to take a more scenic route back, driving through Yellowstone to the East Entrance, then US highways until we hook up with I-90 in mid-Wyoming. That will take us through a couple of big mountain ranges, as opposed to our route on the drive up, which stayed on I-90 almost all the way to Gardiner, MT. I-90 bypasses all the mountain ranges for this trip, staying on the fast-but-boring plains the whole way. This route may add a couple hours to the drive, but it should be a lot more interesting.