Day One - Travel Day & Old Faithful

Thought today would just be a travel day and uneventful but it wasent!

Left at scheduled time of 5am.  Kicked Calgary's dust off our feet and hit Carston in time to see the sun rise (which was gorgeous!).  Then the temperature started dropping. Before we knew it it was -10 and there was a good 6-8inches of snow along side the road.  Um we are heading south isn't it supposed to be getting warming!?!?!?  We did not pack for a ski trip lol.  Hit the US border and got through without a hitch.  And guess which boarder crossing?  Haha the same one when we did our Whitefish ski trip a few years ago.  Remember that trip D?  We went through Browning again and that pizza place is still there!!!!!!

The further into Montana we got the less and less the snow got.  Our route was the most direct possible so we weren't always on a main freeway or highway which suited us just fine.  Hit some construction off the main drags but nothing too delaying. 

Ended up stopping in Helena for lunch at 11:30ish.  Cute little country cafe type place called Steve's Cafe.  Apparently they have the best breakfasts in Helena.  (On a side note Helena is the capital of Montana.)  Back on the road with full bellies, full tank of gas (its cheaper here - only $30 to fill er up) and excitement levels still high.  We ended up in Yellowstone around 3:30/4 (earlier than we expected)  and made our way down to Old Faithful.   The park was a beautiful drive and rounding a corner we  saw a wild bison.  He was HUGE and so close so we pulled over and I got some beauts.  We were so excited to see him.  Rounding the next few corners we came across A WHOLE HERD!!!!  With babies and adults!  It was so amazing.  We also saw quite a few bull elk.  None with horns but they were amazing nonetheless.  And a herd of big horn sheep.  Haha right on the road.

We went into Yellowstone via the west entrance which is closest to Old Faithful. There's a few little pullins with boardwalks and bubbling geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and mudpots.  We bypassed most of em due to tour buses and large amounts of people but we stopped at one just before Old Faithful - Black Sand Basin.  The colors in some of the pools were spectacular, sunset colors with teals and oranges it was enough to spark the imagination to paint them.  It didn't smell as bad as I thought it would until the steam started blowing in your direction and then it smelt terrible.  But not for long.

 

Back in the car we headed up for the main event.  There's quite a bit there!  An lodge you can stay at and a visitors center and a large general store and various other buildings.  We headed directly for the old girl tho in hopes we hadn't missed her big show.  Sure enough she was set to blow within 15 minutes of us getting there.  We couldn't believe how fortunate we were.  So we set up camp and waited.  She teased a bit with big steam spouts and a few energetic water spouts but just as she's named she faithful blew within 15mins.  Kels got some great pictures and I video'd the whole thing on my small camera.  Within 3 min it was done and what we witnessed was very majestic  indeed.  Going to the gift shop after seems very anticlimactic lol. 

Back on the road we decided to head down the rest of Yellowstone and exit out the south entrance.  We saw more bison and bull elk (one bison decided he liked being in the middle of the road show off!) and a beautiful waterfall along the route. It was a long way out of the park but we crossed over Teton National Park.  Made it to Idaho Falls for our first sleep away from home.

All in all we had a great first day and are looking forward to tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Zion National Park hike and then onto Flagstaff to spend the night.

Signing off..