Gardiner, MT/ Yellowstone

June 9, 2015
On our way to Worland, WY we drove through the Big Horn Mountains over Powder River Pass which is almost 10,000 ft high. The views were amazing. It was one of the most beautiful passes we have traveled. The peaks along the pass are as high as 13,000 ft. The RV park in Worland was nice and clean and the owners were great. We sat out watching distant thunder storms until about 10:30.

Thunder heads

June 10, 2015
Up and on the road before 9. We drove through Cody, WY to get to the east gate of Yellowstone and through the park to Gardiner, MT and our RV park. There was about 6 miles of road construction on the west side of the park that was awful. It was rough, dirty, muddy and narrow with multiple places where it was one lane. The truck and trailer were a mess. We did see some elk and bison on the route. After getting set up I cleaned the vehicles up a little and we sat around and had dinner and sat out until about 10:30.

June 11, 2015
 After breakfast we hit the road into Yellowstone and ventured into the north and eastern sections of the park. On the way traffic was stopped dead in both directions for some reason. We went into the oncoming direction to get through it and found that people in buses, cars, and RVs were interested in seeing a mama black bear and her two cubs. We got a glimpse of them as we were going through.

Mama bear

There are a lot of spectacular water falls in the park. Here is one and after we walked a bit farther we saw some mountain goats across the gorge from us.

We stopped at Tower Falls and hiked to the viewpoint. Then we continued south and west to the canyon center and headed for Old Faithful. It was a very long drive with people stopping to take pictures of bison and elk by the road.  

Old Faithful erupted about 30 minutes after we arrived and it was spectacular.

Then it was back to the RV park via the same crappy road I mentioned earlier. It wasn't quite as bad because we weren't towing the trailer but still over a 50 mile drive. We had a nice dinner and sat out again enjoying the nice weather.

June 12, 2015
In mid morning we headed back into Yellowstone and drove to Wraith Falls trail head. It was a nice 1 mile hike to the falls and back. The falls are not real high but are wide and shallow giving the water going over a rippling look as it goes over the rocks and downed trees. Then we went to Mammoth Springs and walked the boardwalk looking at the various springs and colors they have due to all the minerals in the water. The surrounding area has so much calcite in it it looks like a snow field. Overall pretty impressive. The day was nice and sunny until later in the afternoon some clouds came and we had an impressive thunder storm with hard rain following it. No fireplace this night.

June 14, 2015
We slept in this morning and had a good breakfast. We decided to not fight the weekend crowds in the park today. I looked it up and there is an average of almost 18,000 per day in Yellowstone in June. We could see the north gate from our site and there was a lineup of buses, cars and RV's all day. We went into the town of Gardiner, MT to check out the shops and other businesses. There was the usual shops with souvenirs, t-shirts and the like, an art gallery. a leather goods store and some restaurants. We stopped at the Iron Horse Bar and Grill on the Yellowstone River for a beer and a snack.There was a group of 20 or more bikers there from Strassbourgh, France. We spoke to one of them and learned that they flew into Denver and rented Harleys for a tour of several national parks on their 3600 mile, 14 day trip. It was interesting talking to them. We then went to K Pizza to have a late lunch and take leftovers back to the trailer. It was a sunny and fun day. We sat out by the fire after dinner until about 10 and then in to bed to rest up for our 290 drive to Missoula in the morning.