Black Hills to Yellowstone - August 16

This post was from Sunday August 16. Yellowstone is awesome except when it comes to cell phone and internet service...










Today started off a bit poorly - nothing worse than rolling out of a nice warm sleeping bag at 5:15 in the morning than to step out into a cold 40 degrees and wet. Luckily, I had packed up everything the night before so all I needed to do was get my sleeping bag and pad into the car, take down the tent and wrap up the tarp that I have underneath. All of that went into the car soaking wet, but I figured I could dry them all out when I got to Yellowstone. All in all, a successful exit from the Black Hills by about 5:40am to begin the journey west.

I had been dreading the drive to Yellowstone a bit - 450 miles on top of the 1100 I had already done to get north from Fort Worth. I expected to see some nice scenary along the way, but I never expected to see as much as I did. Never have 450 miles gone so fast. Words can't adequately describe nor can pictures, but I'll do what I can.

After leaving the Black Hills National Forest, you are pretty much into Wyoming already. Eastern Wyoming is pretty with rolling prairies and little unique volcano shaped pillars sticking up from the prairie. Nothing particularly large about these things, but their volcano shape made for an interesting landscape. This area must get a good bit of rain because everything was green. Didn't see too many cows, but this must be awesome grazing land.

I came up over a hill and off in the distance were a set of majestic mountains - too soon to be the Rockies, so I looked them up on the map and they were the Big Horn mountains. After a long and slow climb over these mountains, the decent was really steep with some really beautiful multi-colored rock formations along the way.

An hour or so of rolling prairie later and I rolled into Cody, Wyoming, named after Buffalo Bill Cody of course. It was immediately clear why the town of Cody existed as right in front of me were the mountains of the Shoshone National Forest and Cody stood right at a natural pass through these mountains that followed the Shoshone River. The road followed this river (pictures included) for several miles through some really breathtaking scenary. Once through the mountains, a short bit of flat earth followed before starting to make the ascent into Yellowstone.

Upon entering the park, I was immediately struck by the sign that said my campground (Grant) was 51 miles ahead. Yellowstone is a really, really, big park. I knew it was large, but that distance really struck me and Grant Village is not even on the far west edge of the park. As I entered the park, the rain started again - all day it had been absolutely beautiful and I was hoping for some clear weather after it rained a good bit in the Black Hills, but no. Forecast of 29 degrees with rain and some snow for tonight - doesn't Yellowstone know that its the middle of August? Hope my sleeping bag is sufficient for sub freezing weather. I'd have to go back to the Amazon web site to check that - I never dreamed I would need that in the middle of summer. And, I got to see my first elk, grazing between the road and Lake Yellowstone.

Don't know if I will bother to whip out the cooking gear tonight, since the rain has been pretty persistent. Might have to grab a meal at one of the restaurants here in Grant Village. One thing that I did learn was I lucked out in making a reservation at Grant. Its the only campsite that has a cell tower in the whole of Yellowstone. On top of that, it has coin operated showers - never used one of those before, but I take such quick showers, I might get in and out for a quarter. Last but not least, the campsite attendent told me the local Grizzly (a female) only comes into the camp every five or six days. Since I'm staying three, that gives me a 50/50 chance of being here when the bear decides to visit. Of course, there are over 400 campsites so the odds she'll pick mine are even more remote, but needless to say, I will be sleeping with my bear spray tonight.

All in all, the Black Hills were beautiful and quite unique. From dense pine forests (where the Black comes from), to really cool granite outcroppings, to beautiful rolling green prairies, the Black Hills were unlike anything I had seen before. Since it was my first stop, I can't compare it to anything, but it did have some of the most scenic and cool drives that I have ever experienced. The Needles and Iron Mountain by ways were simply amazing - not only in their beauty but in the engineering that went into building them. I read that the Needles Highway required 250,000 pounds of dynamite to build the road. Oh, and the buffalo were about the coolest thing I have ever seen.