Tuesday 25 August 2015
As at least one astute reader noted, I was getting ahead of myself yesterday, a whole month it seems. All is well now, I'm back in August. Today our plan was to drive from Bozeman to Cody via the northern part of Yellowstone NP.
We got going fairly quickly and enjoyed a better breakfast this morning. We left the hotel before nine and rapidly rejoined the I-90 on the edge of town. We stayed on the interstate for about 20 miles passing through open grasslands flanked by huge mountains. At Livingstone, we joined the route 89 going south to Gardiner about 50 miles away.
This road passes through farmland, with mountains either side of the valley and passes the communities of Pray, Emigrant, Miner and Corwin Spring before arriving at the northern gateway town to Yellowstone, Gardiner. I love American place names, they are very utilitarian and often evocative of the pioneering era.
Gardiner is a busy little town with lots of Outfitters, Adventure Tour Companies, two gas stations a selection of hotels and a handful of tourist shops. The old Main Street faces out onto Yellowstone. The town was built at the end of the spur railway line from Livingstone which used to bring visitors into the park. The line has long since gone but the town is still the northern hub for visitors entering Yellowstone. Right on the end of the Main Street is a magnificent, rugged, arched gateway built as the entrance to the park. Currently they are realigning the road, but all visitors used to, and will again next year, pass through to get to the Park.
After buying some lunch at the gas station, we drove up to the Ranger Station and presented our annual pass and were waved straight through and into the park. The first few miles the road winds around through a valley and then crosses a stream that is the State Line between Montana and Wyoming. Then it is up a hill into Mammoth Hot Springs. This is a huge tourist centre with accommodation, food, shops and information services. We stayed here once in one of the 1930s cabins, it was very basic, had shared facilities and was riddled with gopher holes. Now it has all been redeveloped, but in keeping with the surroundings. The original accommodation was again built by the railway company!
We didn't go and visit the hot springs as we has done so on our last visit, they are worth a visit though. Instead, we turned off from the main road almost immediately and turned east towards the northeast park entrance 47 miles away. By the way, this park is immense! This road passes through mainly high prairie surrounded by high mountains. We stopped to look at waterfalls before parking up for lunch close to a short boardwalk trail. The trail wound around amongst some scrubby trees and we saw masses of Song Sparrows a chipmunk and a ground squirrel, a bit disappointing, but it was good to stretch the legs.
Not long after this we found a gravel side road that we took for about 6 miles. The scenery was good, but we saw no wildlife until almost the end of the track when saw a Harris Hawk. We would have liked to watch it more, but other traffic behind us on the single-track road meant we had to move on.
We continued to Tower Junction and again took the turn toward the northeast entrance. From here the road dropped down into a wide valley with Soda Butte Creek running through it. As we drove this part of the road, we had some rather distant views of herds of Bison. Eventually, we stopped further down the road at Soda Butte, the remains of a dried up hot spring as we could see hoards of cars ahead had stopped to look at herds of Bison grazing by the side of the road. I walked around the Butte to take come scenic shots and ame face to face with a large male Bison! Having established it could see me and the I clearly didn't constitute any threat, I took a few photos.
Only a couple of hundred metres down the road, we had to stop whilst a female Bison ambled across the road.
Finally, we reached the northeast entrance and left the park. Don't worry, we'll be back tomorrow!
We stopped briefly at a small community called Silver Gate for a small (!) ice cream made by a company called Willcoxsons. It was delicious needless to say. From here, we continue back into Montana to Cooke City and from there another few miles to the turn off to the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway and Cody. Round about here, we passed back into Wyoming. This road passed through 46 miles of beautiful scenery in the mountains and took us over Dead Indian Pass (8048ft), so named after a famous encounter between the Nez Percent Indian tribe and the U.S. 7th Cavalry in which the Cavalry came second. The views were magnificent and we were overun by Five-stripe Chipmunks, dozens of them!
On the way back down from the pass, we came across a group of cowboys on horses rounding up cattle. We stopped to watch them for a few minutes. From here it was 17 miles downhill on the route 120 into Cody, Wyoming. This is cowboy town. Buffalo Bill lived here and the town stages a nightly recreation of a cowboy shoot-out on the Main Street every night at six!
We checked into our hotel for the next three nights, the Best Western Sunset Motor Inn. We have a pleasant ground floor room with a patio outside and indoor and outdoor pools and a hot tub to relax in! We ate dinner at a small microbrewery, they did small, delicious pizzas. Perfect American meal, pizza and beer!
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