Day Two - Coeur d'Alene to Cody - the full story

Dad woke me up SUPER early on Sunday morning (5:30am on a Sunday, seriously?!) We ended up on the road about 7am. Yeah, I was thrilled. It’s a good thing I was looking forward to Yellowstone! The lovely Shirlene fed us breakfast and armed us with snacks (raspberry muffins that are DELISH) and away we went. Spent the morning driving through the mountains of Idaho and then into Montana.

Montana was gorgeous! The sky really does feel bigger there, it’s simply amazing.

We made a couple of short stops for fuel (both us and the car). One short stop turned into half an hour because the gal making sandwiches at the Subway in Three Falls, MT was brand new and super slow. We eventually made it to Yellowstone.

Dad thought that when we entered the park that we’d be entering Wyoming at the same time… But we didn’t see a sign! Since we’d decided to capture all of the state signs as we encounter them, we were bummed to miss WY’s. And then we saw it! When you enter the park from West Yellowstone, you’re still in MT for a few hundred feet. We almost missed it for real though! It’s a cute little sign –

Dad talked up the wildlife he saw on previous trips to Yellowstone. I was hoping to see a bear or wolf or something crazy. We saw a few deer, a few elk and of course, the bison! Some of the animals are tagged with radio transmitters (check out the deer shot!) It was so wild to me – they just chill along the side of the road. Cars and people all over the place and the animals just do their thing. They could care less about us. :)

We stopped and saw these incredible bubbling pools at Fountain Paint Pot. There were all different kinds, bubbling mud, random little geysers and pools of hot water that just steam.

And then we made our way to Old Faithful. We got there a little earlier than I would have liked, it was a little on the chilly side. ;) We sat down on a bench and waited (more or less patiently) for Old Faithful to do her thing. About a minute or so after we sat down, the sweetest lady started talking to us. She never gave us her name or age, but she and her husband (Carl, 83 – got his info!) were celebrating their 59^th wedding anniversary. They’re from Dallas and were traveling with a tour around Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. She was a kick! Carl had been walking around and at one point after he joined us, she hooked her thumb at him and said, “This crazy thing…” At which point Dad just started dying of laughter. I can’t even remember what she was saying we were so fixated on “this crazy thing”. Dad decided that’s what he’s calling me for the rest of this trip. My guess is that next week it will be Adam. ;)

Sure enough, within a couple of minutes of the time Carl said, Old Faithful made her appearance. The benches were PACKED with people and cameras. I, of course, was one of them. Based on the way the wind was blowing, we had a pretty good spot! The geyser shot up and the steam blew to the right. Pretty awesome!

After that we toodled out of the park and on the path to Cody WY. Dad was expecting something pretty small like Kellogg, MT but it turned out to be good sized. We got a room at a Comfort Inn, grabbed some dinner at Irma’s (cool looking bar + animal heads ALL OVER) and then we crashed. It was a long, but wonderful day.