Friday we met our friend Kelli again for Canyon for a good breakfast. Canyon seems to be a good starting point, and would recommend staying in that area for future visits. Yellowstone Lake is beautiful, but unless you are going out on it by boat, then there isn’t much else to do there. The scenic cruises were suspended until further notice, so we couldn’t of done that even if we wanted to. But thats ok because we had much more exciting things planned.
Our first stop was to check out the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Not as wide was the Grand Canyon itself, it was still beautiful. There are various amazing views of the canyon, the river, and even an osprey nest situated on top of one of the rock towers. IT was a great way to start the morning.
Next we planned to hike to the top of Mount Washburn. There are two ways to do that. You can drive up Chittenden Road (which we did the first night) and hike, or hike from a trailhead off the main road. It is a shorter hike but steeper. It was about 6 miles or so road trip. You work your way up to the Top of Mount Washburn, above the timber line. We had great weather, a little chilly and super windy/cold by the time we made it to the top, but the skies were clear. Which was good because on a clear day you can get 100 mile views of the entire park and views of the Tetons range in the distance. At the top lives a ranger whose soul purpose is to basically watch for forrest fires. (S)he lives on top of the fire tower. Below their “apartment” is an enclosed observation room that has a telescope and great detailed panoramic pictures labeling what you are seeing around you and the # of miles it is away. We stopped, sat down, ate some snacks and then walked out on the observation deck to get even better views. There was no possible way of capturing it all in one image. But it was amazing to see and to realize how high up are you and just who extensive and unique the landscape of Yellowstone is.
On our journey down we ran into a bunch of sheep. They were coming up in a big herd and stopped right in the middle of the road. You should never approach wildlife, they are in fact wild. So we just stood there and hoped they would pass. We made some intense eye contact with the adult sheep but then they scampered down the hill. We have been waiting this whole time to see sheep or goats, and now we finally saw a whole bunch of them!
We thought we would try to keep up our luck with the wildlife spotting so we headed into the Lamar Valley and out the North East Entrance of the park. The Lamar Valley is notorious for spotting wildlife (bears, wolves, elk, deer, and bison). On our way in and out of the park we saw a TON of bison and a lot of deer. There were people out with binoculars and scopes camped out waiting to see something a little more exotic. We ended up in Cooke City and ate dinner at some restaurant. It was a strange little town that had a block of stores. We ate our food and tried to get out as quickly as we came. On our way back in the bison moved closer to the road. We never got sick of seeing those guys!
After we made it back to Canyon we said our goodbyes to our friend Kelli, realized we would be back to our “real life” jobs soon enough and parted. Tomorrow we are headed back into Montana for some nerdy history fun, so we went back to camp. Got packed up a little and went to bed!
Yellowstone was awesome, there was still so much that we could of done, but we really had a great time and felt like with the short time we were there we were able to experience some amazing things!
Dietz Summer Road Trip 