What a Day! (Days 29-30 - Part 1)

This day was so cool! After a cold, wet day yesterday during which we drove from Rapid City to Buffalo, Wyoming, we woke up to a clear, gorgeous, crisp 43 degree morning. The drive towards Yellowstone was beautiful -- snow covered mountains in the distance, snow sprinkled pine trees along the roadside and covering the hillsides, and sun shining on it all. We even got to see about 30 antelope grazing on one of the hillsides as we drove along.

To make things even better, we had two interruptions, both were interruptions that would be most uncommon on Southern California freeways and both necessitated that we stop and wait. The first was a herd of cattle that just could not quite decide on which side of the road they most wanted to walk, so they walked on the left, right, and middle, back and forth, but finally cleared the road enough for cars to slowly drive through.


Not long after that, as I was driving along the highway, I noticed movement in the field to our right, so I slowed down, then stopped and watched a group of 8-10 antelope bound over the bank, across the road, and up the hill. Starting to drive on, I looked one more time and was thankful I had because one last little guy needed the break to dash across the road and catch up with the others before we headed on down the highway.

We arrived in Yellowstone this afternoon, driving the miles from the east entrance through to the west exit and West Yellowstone, with many stops along the way. Yellowstone is gorgeous with many lush trees, switfly flowing rivers, and a magnificent lake . . . and it is sad. There are so many areas that have been devastated by fires over the past few years, and the scars of those fires are stark. The encouraging thing is that you can see small, new trees (knee high to just over your head) growing to reforest the areas devastated by fires, with the burned trees standing tall and spindly against the skyline.


Late this afternoon, after seeing some buffalo and what we think was a gray fox, we enjoyed watching Old Faithful erupt, something that Neil had never seen before. It was quite impressive!