Today began at the Buffalo, WY KOA. It was a very nice RV Park and I've been learning that you know exactly what you get at a KOA. Some are nicer than others, but you're almost guaranteed clean facilities, nice people and a dog run at each one. All 3 rank highly on our checklist when giving a park a good grade.
We arrived at the KOA around 1:15am which was about 90 minutes later than anticipated because we had our first directional snafu in all of our adventures. While this is a good thing, I tend not to reflect on how good my directions have been over the course of close to 6,000 miles when it's late, I'm on pitch black roads in WY and all I want to see is that yellow KOA sign. Another thing I reaffirmed on this trip is I should leave Jennie with the directions. In the grand scheme of things we have certain "jobs" in our marriage. I do math and the bug killing. Jennie hooks up electronics and handles directions. We were having some difficulty with the local portion of the directions (in Buffalo) and I suggested trying Mapquest. Jennie is a loyal Google Maps girl. We tried Mapquest. Read the first sentence of this paragraph again and then remember to listen to Jennie if you ever ask us for directions.
I think this extra 90 minutes would have been met with laughter and a sense of adventure on most days. What's 90 minutes to us? We've been driving 6-10 hours a day for a week now (already a week!) and actually like doing it. Yesterday we were pushing close to 13 hours in a moving RV and we'd both had enough. I managed to drive the entire day and clocked 450 miles on the odometer. Wait. 450 miles? 13 hours? Were we being pulled by a horse? Nope, the first 6 hours or so were spent exploring Yellowstone National Park.
The park is huge and we're glad we did it, but both of us agreed that the Grand Teton National Park was much more scenic. Put it this way, Yellowstone was good to check off the list. Grand Teton we'd want to go back to and if you only had time for one I'd suggest GTNP. However, Yellowstone did provide us with our most interactive part of our trip to date. In searching the things to do at Yellowstone, I came across a live webcam at Old Faithful. Then it hit me. How cool would it be to tell our family and friends when we'd be there so they could see us?
We were excited for this as were our parents. Now we'd sent them the link, but both of us got detailed instructions on how this webcam process worked. It was cute. They didn't want to miss us. We got to Old Faithful, positioned ourselves in front of the camera and soon thereafter the phone calls and text messages started flowing in.
"We see you!"
"I'm waving back to you"
"Why don't you flash the camera?"
We're not sure of how many US states were viewing us at the time, but we do know for sure that 3 countries were tuning in (USA, Canada, Panama)
Other highlights from Yellowstone were seeing a group of Bison crossing the parking lot at Old Faithful
Driving through the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone"
And being invited to go elk hunting in Montana with a guy named Dennis and his wife. They are from LA, but pretty much live the RV life on the road. We'd driven behind them and stopped off at scenic overlooks together for a little while.As I mentioned earlier, we loved Grand Teton National Park and it provided some of the most beautiful scenery of our trip, the day before Yellowstone. We'd rented a Subaru Forrester from the Grand Teton RV Park in Moran, WY, put Daisy in the back seat and stopped off for a bite to eat before exploring the National Park for the afternoon.
We arrived at the front entrance of GTNP in Moran Junction, got our weekly national park pass (good for Yellowstone the next day too) and followed the map for up close views of the Tetons. The loop was a little less than 50 miles and each turn provided views more beautiful than the next.
My favorite place was Jenny Lake. Only an "ie" off from being perfectly named, but it was gorgeous nonetheless. It was also the quietest place I've been to in a long time, possibly ever.
We came back to the RV Park thoroughly satisfied with our scenic viewing for the day and then got the most gorgeous sunset I have ever seen, bar none.
After the sunset we hopped back into the Subaru and drove into Jackson Hole for some dinner. We both loved the town square area and I'd really like to get back one winter for some skiing/snowboarding.
We're extremely close to the South Dakota border and should be at Mt. Rushmore within the next hour. Pictures of our time there will be up soon. In the meantime, there are plenty of photos since our last update. Check out this link for the latest.
Jimmy
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