Iowa Trip Wednesday June 25

The next morning I saw a huge dog poking around one of our neighbor’s tents. It wasn’t making a sound, just sniffing around. Upon closer examination and opening both of my eyes it turned out that it was an elk. Not just one, but four elk wandering around through the campsites. The rangers told us about a bear that had been wandering out the campsites looking for food, but they hadn’t said anything about elks trying to mooch a free meal. Anyway, it was pretty cool to see them nosing around as long as they weren’t eating up our food.

This morning we drove by Yellowstone Lake. It’s a huge lake with 140 miles of shoreline, and it’s cold too so there were no beaches to swim at. I did manage to keep Sandi out of the water in spite of that though. We drove up the eastern side of the park to Mammoth Hot Springs. While we didn’t see any Wooly Mammoths on the way we did see some of their shirttail relatives. We saw probably 200 Rib Eyes on the hoof in the form of American Bison. Also, we saw about 100 Rib Roasts in the form of Elk. We even saw a Black Bear and quite a few Antelope and a Dall Sheep. While we saw some moose droppings we didn’t see any of the droppees.

We took the NE exit out of the park and it very pretty again. Yellowstone holds such a varied tapestry of biomes it’s hard to take it all in. I guess large catastrophic events are not always a bad thing. On the way out of the park we followed the Yellowstone River (surprise) and it must have been quite a steep gradient as it was a very swift flowing river. Soon we started climbing again and the river fell away below us. There were snow covered mountains and rock spires all around us. The views went from “beautiful” to “wow” to “ .” Yes, soon we were just speechless. The speed limit in Montana on roads like this are posted as 75 MPH, but I was holding on to the steering wheel with both hands watching as the rear of the car came around a corner that I had just steered the front wheels around. Yes, there were hair-pin corners on every corner and we weren’t going 75 MPH. The alpine lakes still had snow on, in, and around them. It was a beautiful sight to see….from a distance. Later as we crested the summit there was a sign that said the elevation was 10, 849 feet. I felt on top of the world and a very sporting to be up there just wearing my T-Shirt until I saw a guy just cresting the hill on his bike. It was by accident that we took this road and we found out later that it was voted as “one of the most beautiful drives in the United States.” I’m not sure who was in on the voting but I’d have to agree with them.

Stayed the night at a KOA in Billings, Montana. Nothing really exciting until we heard the orchestra get tuned up for the evening. The bullfrogs were calling to each other. They sounded like they were just in front of our tent. It sounded like a bunch of Whoopee Cushions calling to each from all sides of the lake.
By the way, I have to take back everything I previously said about guys that ride Harleys. I saw a young bald-headed guy with only a goatee camping beside us.