Back On The Road

It was difficult to leave Ashton this morning.  We have had such a wonderful time and those babies are such a treat.  We love 'em all.  But, we have to get home sometime this month.  The postal service is holding our mail until the 28th.  After that, they'll start returning to sender.

We headed back up to Yellowstone through the west entrance.  When we came to Ashton, we just cut across the park and didn't do much sight seeing.  So, since we're here...  We entered the park and drove on down to Old Faithful.  Had a short wait, but watched her spout off at about 5:15 pm.  Actually, I almost missed the show, but here's proof we were there.

We had no reservations anywhere, so I checked with a Ranger at the info desk at Old Faithful Visitor Center.  He said about our only choice was Lewis Lake campground, which was great because we were heading that way (south) in the morning, anyway.

We arrived at the campground just at dusk and went looking for a site.  Actually, there were plenty open sites, but we needed a level one to make things easier.  We latched onto site B-14.  By then it was dark...deep forest dark...lions and tigers and bears, oh my!  Well, there were bears shi, uh, hiding in those woods, anyway.  Joyce fixed some dinner while I walked Ditto and shortly after that, we hit the sack.  No bears had accosted Ditto or me.  We had decided to tour the park again rather than head south for the Grand Tetons right away and it had been a long day, our first day back on the road.

We just about froze Monday night.  The furnace quit on us in the middle of the night and being a National Park, there was no electrical power available to run our electric heater.  When I got up, it was 32 degrees.  The furnace would not light and the cooktop wouldn't even stay lit.  Something was wrong with the gas, probably the regulator.  Joyce was really upset and I wasn't far behind.  If I couldn't get the gas to work, our vacation was over.  But, as the morning sun started warming things up, the cooktop lit and stayed on.  Eventually, the furnace did, too.  I guess there was moisture in the propane regulator that froze up and when thawed out, everything worked normally.  Maybe we can finish our vacation after all.

We visited Yellowstone in July of 2014.  It was not a pretty sight.  I think half of China was there along with Los Angeles and portions of the rest of the world.  The crowds and traffic made it totally "unfun", so we just scooted on out the other side.  This time, being the early part of October, the scene was totally different.  Oh, half the crowd was still Chinese (or, at least Oriental), but we could see actual gaps in the traffic flow.  Nowhere did we have to jockey for parking.  Heck, it was nearly empty!  Except for the occasional roadblock.

We visited Yellowstone in 1970, too.  I took a photo then of Joyce and the boys sitting on a bench in front of the Yellowstone Lower Falls (Dusty is in the photo, but not yet visible).  Joyce couldn't make the walk to the same spot this time, but I did.  While there, I got a fellow visitor to take my photo on that same bench...45 years later.  How cool is that?