We left the Coral Bar and drove to our campground. After an abbreviated “settling in,” we proceeded to a local golf course where we had a tee time at 3:15. We played a scramble and enjoyed the remarkable scenery. After we finished golfing, we went to Plonks in downtown Bozeman for a drink. We also noted Ellen’s theater in downtown Bozeman. Unfortunately, the dates aren’t going to work out for us to attend any events there.
We left the Yellowstone KOA and drove to Big Sky, Montana. When we were planning our trip, we thought that Big Sky was an actual town that we would be camping near. But, it appears to mostly be a ski resort. So, we aren’t actually going to be in Big Sky. We did, however, stop to eat at the Coral Bar in the Big Sky area. The bar was a one-room restaurant/bar, and not overly large. Despite its small size, it had more preserved animals, animal busts, and animal hides than I’ve ever seen in a restaurant before. Quite a dose of local flavor!!!
The Yellowstone KOA, at $67 per night ($87 if we had cable TV and 50 amp service—both of which we thought came with our site), is the most expensive campground we have ever stayed at. But, it was a lovely campground (even though the Internet only worked for us in the early morning and around midnight). We had two bonfires and lots of relaxing walks around the large campground. We enjoyed checking out all the tent and RV set-ups.
As we moved from the Grand Tetons to our campground by Yellowstone, we drove right through Yellowstone. So, we stopped at Old Faithful on our way.
When we first arrived at Old Faithful, the huge parking lots were madhouses and we could quickly see that there was no where for a 60-foot set-up like us to park. So, we were going to leave and go to the campground with plans to return the next day. Luckily, on our way out of the mess of cars, we happened upon an RV parking lot (no signs to guides us there, just luck). So, we ended up staying after all. We decided to eat lunch and then figure out where to go to see Old Faithful. As we were leaving our RVs after lunch at 1:00, we saw the geyser going off a little ways away. So, we then knew where to find Old Faithful, but we also had to wait 93 minutes (plus or minus 10 minutes) for it to go off again. Had we realized the timing before we ate lunch, we would obviously have waited on lunch. We did, however, get to sit in the front row as the mass of 3000 people gathered waiting for the next eruption
After Old Faithful was finished spewing, we had to leave the RV parking lot, which was an adventure all its own. We had four choices: Sit and wait until some RVs in our way left, try to maneuver very questionably tight places, unhook the car, or have someone who wasn’t leaving but who was willing to move out of our way. Lucky for us, the last choice was the easiest and the one that worked out. When we finally were free of the parking lot, we drove on towards our campground and saw other small geysers on our way.
The next day, we went into another area of Yellowstone and had quite an eventful day of great scenery and exciting animal sightings. We saw an elk in the water, a large crow eating stuff thrown from the car in front of us, two female pronghorn deer being chased by a male pronghorn deer, a black bear wandering off (but we couldn’t get a picture), a buffalo in a field, a grizzly bear with two baby cubs, and a buffalo right beside our car.
We had to wait over 45 minutes to get past some construction and about 30 minutes to get past an accident, but other than that the day flowed very smoothly. We enjoyed a picnic on a group of fallen logs in the forest, which was really enjoyable since we have been driving by the forests full of fallen logs and tall trees for days.
I touched the cooled white material that flows from the geysers, and was surprised to find that it feels just like talcum powder. All in all, it was quite an exciting day!
On our final full day in Yellowstone, we checked out all the cute shops in the town of West Yellowstone. The town has only 1000 people (aside from tourists), but has the amenities of a town of 30,000 or 40,000 people. I expect they love the tourists!
