Yellowstone or bust...

Day 3: Rocky Mountain National Park, CO. to Yellowstone National Park, WY. Trip Total: 1,511 miles.

I’m the first awake when the birds start singing just before the sun comes up. It’s very warm in my sleeping bag, but my face is cold. As are my clothes when I finally decide to get up. According to the car it’s 37F, so I find out a fleece, and then my thick winter coat and gloves, and I’m still cold. We didn’t make it nearly as far yesterday as we planned, so today is going to be a long driving day – not as long as the first day, but around 500 miles if we are going to get to Yellowstone where we have reserved a campsite for 3 nights.

I feed myself, try to arrange the car better so I can get to my camera gear more easily, and eventually around 6:00am the farting noises come from the tent – my brother is awake. He emerges from the tent in shorts, and finds the sight of me in thick winter clothes, gloves and cradling a hot drink hilarious. He’s used to living in a cold climate, I’ve been living in Texas for the past dozen years and have acclimatized. The she-wolf emerges shortly afterwards, looking for warm clothes and food.

We eat, pack up camp, and hit the road early. About 500 miles today, but we don’t know what the roads are like. Coming out of the west entrance to the park we are in the Rockies well away from the Interstate, aiming to have camp set up in Yellowstone well before dark.

The roads north out of Colorado are impressive, winding slowly through the valleys, next to rivers and surrounded by tall pine trees. Wouldn’t want to cross this country in a wagon train. The land flattens as we go into Wyoming. Shortly after crossing the border we are greeted with a huge sign that simply says “Eat Beef” much to my amusement and my veggie brothers dismay. We encounter numerous other similar signs before we finally pick up Interstate 80 and head west to Rawlins for lunch. Rawlins isn’t the biggest city in America - let’s just say the choice for lunch was somewhat limited, especially with a veggie on board. After lunch, we head northwest towards Yellowstone under the huge Wyoming sky.

Small chipmunk sized creatures keep running across the road in front of us – at one point one runs out, sees the car coming, stands on it’s hind legs looking at us – my brother swerves left, and nails it with the right tire. I tell him good shot, but it turns out he was swerving to avoid it, and now feels guilty. Katie sleeps through this, having surrounded herself with pillows, and actually looks quite comfortable.

By this time my iPod has played all the way through, so my brother plugs his in. After several tracks I ask him if he's trying to recreate the atmosphere of a French Bistro and Mexican Cantina in a car in the middle of Colorado - so far everything has sounded like French or Spanish elevator music, and neither of us speak either of those languages. We don't speak Portuguese either, which apparently is what some of the tracks were, from the Life Aquatic sound track, a film I’ve not seen. I’m not sure exactly how many songs his iPod holds, I recognized one Eagles song, another he claimed to be Bowie, and I think there were maybe 3 or 4 more in assorted languages, but it was hard to tell to my uncultured ear. Call me strange, but I actually like to be able to tell what the song is about. Oh well.

A couple of hours later, I see flashing lights behind me so I pull over. Bollocks. Two men traveling with a little girl may seem suspicious to some, so I have my license and insurance out, and I’m ready to answer questions. The officer informs me I was doing 82 in a 65, takes my documents, checks the car stickers, asks where we are going, and then disappears to call in my info. He comes back a couple of minutes later, a lot friendlier, to my surprise just gives me a written warning and hopes we enjoy our trip.

Through Colorado we had a cell phone signal pretty much all the time we were near an Interstate, and the rest of the time it was intermittent at best. Now in Wyoming it’s nonexistent. As we get further north the landscape starts to get rockier, Katie gets extremely excited and takes pictures when she sees purple rocks.

Then as we get closer to the Grand Tetons, the scenery changes dramatically – almost Alpine, with steep valleys and tall trees, with plenty of un-melted snow wherever there is shade. Three times on this stretch of road we get stopped for construction work – either road repairs or clearing fallen trees. On one occasion we are front in line, the cute brunette holding the stop sign explains it’ll only be a few minutes, they are clearing rocks from the road etc. When she finally tells us it’s clear to go, my recently single brother hits the gas peddle a little too hard, the car lurches forward, the map book flies off the dashboard into my lap, there is a clatter from the back as all the cooking stuff falls over, and we burst out laughing – real smooth.

Finally enter the Grand Teton National Park, head north and then into Yellowstone National Park. Driving up the south entrance, surrounded by burnt trees and a sheer drop into a deep canyon a couple off feet off the side of the road.

We make it to the campsite around 5:00pm, I go to the registration hut, and get the standard lecture about bear safety, the massive fines if any foods, food packets etc are left laying around the campsite etc., and then get told a bear has been seen in the area. We lost the cell phone signal two hours drive to the south. Great. This is my third time to Yellowstone, I’ve yet to see a bear, could be an interesting way to see one.

We let Katie put up the tent:

Everywhere in the campsite there are signs about staying away from Buffalo that wander into the camp. What happens if you are in a tent and they are outside? As we are setting up the tent, there are deer wandering around the campsite. My brother flicks through the newspaper they gave us on the way in, it says the best place to see large animals is in the Hudson Valley. We look at the map. We are at the south end of the valley – no wonder this was the only campsite we could get a reservation at with such short notice.

I take Katie for a walk to the store, where she buys a pack of Yellowstone playing cards. We get a fire going, and try to teach Katie how to play poker (figured since she could already play Yatzee, 5 card draw wouldn’t be too much of a stretch). That proves a little too challenging for a 5 year old, so we teach her Blackjack instead, which she loves.

As darkness falls we retreat to the tent. My brother is obviously feeling a little nervous about the wildlife, he sleeps with my buck knife (to cut his way out of the tent) and Maglite (for self defense against bears – good luck with that), just in case. Having said that, I’m sleeping with my survival knife next to me. And a 5 year old with a stuffed elephant snuggled up in a sleeping bag to me on the other side.

The campsite is at 7,800 ft, so this time I have warm clothes in the tent ready for the morning, and after a long day, I’m asleep as soon as it gets dark, bears in the area or not. Besides, I’m now on my second night in a tent, despite everyone doubting me.