Northwestern Adventure: Snowed in - Take the Road Less Traveled

We started our day in West Yellowstone, Montana, a cute little town that feeds on the tourist trade.

Ida would not let me buy one.

Yesterday, we said that Yellowstone was a wilderness. Well today we had a real surprise. Entering Yellowstone in the morning we found out that the road that we intended to take to Cody was blocked by SNOW. That's right, snow in September. They said it would be opened later in the day, maybe, and suggested we take the Northeast Entrance which is a huge detour, but the only other way there.

In the higher elevations the dusting of snow on the lodge pole pines was beautiful. It was 34 degrees when we were there, later warming to about 60 degrees but unless the wind was blowing it did not feel bad.

We decided to make the best of it and stocked up on food in the Canyon area and headed to the Upper Falls which we did not see yesterday. This time, we were right over the falls and the rush of ice cold water was spectacular.


Yellowstone River near Upper Falls

We then traveled back over some of the same road we saw yesterday toward the Northeast Entrance. The Northeast Entrance is the least used of the five entrances to Yellowstone and for a good reason. Its in the middle of nowhere! We had no cell service, no satellite radio. In fact, there were was nothing but mile after mile of beautiful scenery and animals. Our buffalo count leaped to 64 after we ran into a few herds..

Scenic Valley

Lamar Valley, Home of Yellowstone's wolves

Starting the day in Montana, we entered Wyoming once in Yellowstone, then entered Montana again before entering Wyoming again. Very Confusing.

The diversion enabled us to be on the Beartooth Highway, which Charles Kuralt called the most scenic route in America. We did not stay on it long enough to reach its highest altitudes because we had to take the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway toward Cody. The trip still took us through the Shoshone National Forest, America's first National Forest.

Traveling this route, we only came across three towns, all very small.

We passed many ranches, all of which seemed to have an Open Range, which meant that the cattle could wander wherever they wanted. These were too numerous to count.

Red Rock Formation

Cattle


Sunlight Creek

Once getting into Cody we visited the Buffalo Bill Historical Center as planned, it has five museums and we managed to wander through four of them (Sorry NRA members we skipped the gun museum). We saw the Natural History, Buffalo Bill, Plains Indians, and Western Art museums.