Yellowstone

It was very warm last night in the Walmart parking lot. We made a mistake and parked so that the parking lot light shined right into the window above the bed and right onto me. That made it hard, I could not throw off the covers and lay there naked because the light was shining right on me. It would have been a great view for someone. But when it cooled off we slept better.

I have to laugh at myself. After we had dinner Bob got on line to do his month end recap of our finances (Yes we can do that in a Walmart parking lot as long as we have cell phone reception.) He wanted to print out the summary of our charges so that he could compare them to our receipts. The printer was out of colored ink (it still had black but no colors). I was in the store shopping so Bob started to look around for the extra ink that we had packed. When I got back he said that he could not find it. I remembered seeing it the day before when I was cleaning. I started looking. I pulled up the seats with the storage underneath - not there. I pulled out the drawers - not there. I looked in the drawers in the pickup - not there. I pulled up the seats again, I pulled out the drawers again, I searched every inch of the pickup - thinking maybe it had fallen out - not there. I thought about going into Walmart to see if they carried the ink we needed. I was so frustrated. I KNEW that I had seen it. Bob finally changed all the fonts to black and printed it out. We were tired and irritable. I suggested that we have a drink of the scotch that I had brought. (I keep the scotch wrapped in a dish towel with all of the cleaning stuff because the cleaning stuff is all plastic and I can keep the glass bottle of scotch from rolling around.) I pulled out the scotch and guess what was behind it amidst all the cleaning stuff - the printer ink! I have no idea why I put it there. Maybe I needed more stuff to hold up the scotch bottle. We just started to laugh and then sat there drinking the scotch. How can you lose stuff when this trailer is so small?

We left Cody fairly early and headed for Yellowstone. One of the best buys we ever made was to buy the senior pass for national parks. It has gotten us into at least three different parks on this trip without any cost and Yellowstone was another one. Nice!!!

According to the literature the entire park is above 7000 feet in altitude. Bob has a hard time breathing above 5000 feet so this was a challenge for him. I asked him to stop so that I could take some pictures. He got out the driver's door and walked to the passenger door and was out of breath and had to rest. So he did not get out much.

There is a big lake in the middle of the park that is a caldera resulting from a volcano. (I didn't know that the park was part of a volcano.) The trees in the eastern end of the park have been devastated by a beetle. They are dead. It makes it hard to look at them. But it was an amazing sight to see.

We then got to the area of the geysers. There were way too many people around Old Faithful so we skipped that one and went to one of the smaller ones. Wow. Bob was not able to walk so he stayed in the truck and I walked up to the geyser. It was really hot. The steam was pouring out. You could feel the heat walking by from about 15 feet away. The steam was so heavy that there were times when you could not see anything. The smell was a little sulfuric, but not bad. The sulfur in the water left yellow stains on the rocks as it went over the falls and into the river. (I had one of those really stupid moments about 5 minutes after getting in the truck when I realized why the park is named Yellowstone. Duh!) We had a very nice picnic lunch, but it was hard on Bob to stay much longer, so we just drove out. I liked it, but to tell the truth I was more impressed with Bighorn yesterday. I would like to go back and camp at Bighorn. Yellowstone is just too crowded. (Yeah I know this is a holiday weekend but from everything I heard it is always crowded.)

We drove 8 miles in Montana and then into Idaho. I must say that eastern Idaho looks like someone decided that the entire part of the state should be a dump. There is trash all over the place - in huge piles and everywhere. There did not appear to be any pride of place. I don't think we had seen any other place that was as trashy. It got a little better as we drove west and it became more agricultural. But there was still lots of trash.

We are now in a Walmart lot just outside of Twin Falls Idaho. So close to home. We will probably camp in Oregon for a day or two. It all depends on whether we can find a place to camp during the holiday weekend.

We look back on this and we both agree that we are getting tired and we want to come home. We are thinking about where we will park Honey in our small driveway and I am planning on getting my hair cut as soon as possible. We are looking forward to pulling up to a gas station, rolling down the window, and saying "fill 'er up." Soon.