Ok, here's the new stuff... the rest of the story

Now that I've caught everyone up with the old pictures, I'll start from scratch with our trip through Wyoming and into Montana.

We left Scottsbluff yesterday morning, planning a pretty long day of driving to get us up to Yellowstone, through Grand Teton. I don't think we expected it to take as long as it did, though, thanks to a couple of road construction delays. We got to wait for about 15 minutes on three different occasions... they have torn up the pavement on some of the road leading into Teton, so we got to wait for an escort through the constructoin zone. Good times! - Made better by a grumpy flag-woman who we just tried to get some information from. I guess she didn't know much about what they were doing along the entire road, so she got a little upset when Jason tried to ask her what was going on. Lesson learned: just listen to your book on CD and be patient!

We finally got to Grand Teton National Park, though, and drove through that to get to Yellowstone. The views were absolutely breathtaking, and almost worth the $25 you have to pay to drive through the parks. Here's a good shot from a pull-out in Teton:

The south entrance to Yellowstone just follows the road from Teton, so we drove through that way and up toward Old Faithful. As luck would have it, we finally pulled into the parking lot at the Old Faithful visitor center about 10 or 15 minutes after it had gone off. We were hurrying toward the viewing area, only to meet up with a bunch of people coming back toward us - a sure sign that the show was over! Old Faithful "erupts" (is that the right word??) about every 90 minutes, but we really didn't want to stick around that long since we still had another 40 miles to go to get to our hotel for the night. So we had to settle for post-steam pictures of Old Faithful:

As we drove through the rest of the park, though, we were treated with some glimpses of elk, deer, and.... BISON! When I was little, and living in Nebraska, we would see buffalo all the time when we drove out to my grandfather's house in Kimball, so it wasn't that big a deal to me to see some wild buffalo. Jason, however, has never seen them, and was very excited to get the opportunity to watch two different herds toward the west entrance to Yellowstone. Again, my 300mm zoon lens came in handy!

We got to our hotel in West Yellowstone SUPER late last night, but got to sleep in a bit this morning. Thanks to a phone call from Mom, I didn't get around the posting this morning, though... so you can all blame Mary for your late entertainment tonight! Today we planned to just drive up to Missoula - setting ourselves up for a drive through Glacier National Park tomorrow. Our big highlight was supposed to be the Dumas Historic Victorian Brothel Museum in Butte, MT, a travel tip courtesy of Jim and Maryanne Reidy.... but we were sorely disappointed to find that the "museum" has closed its doors since their trip out this way a couple years ago. Heartbroken, we stopped by a Wendy's in Butte for a snack, where I got to see Jason almost implode due to some local characters - I guess I'm not the only one who's being affected by the travel!!! We then finished up our drive to Missoula, where we headed out for a walk with Fred to appease him after all the time we've been making him spend in the car. He's surviving though, as you can see in this picture from a quick road-side stop for a scenery picture. He sticks his head out the window every chance he gets!

Here's the view I got while he was patiently waiting in the car!

This was just something to look at on the highway through Montana... what a great state!!!!

Tomorrow morning - early, and with the disappointment of the closed brothel museum behind us - we head out for Glacier National Park and the Canadian border. Hopefully our border crossing with be uneventful... we're armed with passports, orders, a health certificate for Fred, and nothing illegal. Jason said he'll probably declare his last case of homebrew which is buried somewhere in the trailer, but I'm worried the border guards will need to "confiscate" that! Just kidding, of course, I'm sure it'll all be fine!!! Next post - South Calgary, Alberta, Canada!!!