Yellowstone Anniversary Trip

In my last blog I talked about our trip to Yellowstone to celebrate our 50th anniversary. I had meant to get home and get right to downloading my pictures and sharing our trip with you...and now we've been home for nearly a month! In my defense, when we arrived home the kids all came for a day or two so that we could take family pictures. When the last kids left for home on Sunday morning, we headed back to bed feeling nasty!

Turns out there was a lady on our ill-fated Yellowstone Park tour who had a nasty cough. I asked her if she had a cold, but she assured me that it was "just allergies". Turns out that allergies are apparently contagious because we came down with a doozy of a cough and cold. In retrospect we figure it was most likely covid since neither of us has been able to enjoy the taste of anything we've eaten since then! So we've been trying to recover and keep up with life.

Today I finally downloaded the pictures on my camera, and my memories came flooding back of the great time we had on our trip. I will download the pictures on Facebook for anyone who wants to look, but I am not offended if you don't scroll through 100+ picutres. Other people's vacation pictures are not always something I enjoy looking at either.

We left on Friday morning, June 10th and drove through the western half of Nebraska and three-quarters of Wyoming before arriving at our destination in Cody, Wyoming. Cody is a beautiful town situated in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. 

On Saturday and Sunday we toured the Buffalo Bill Western Museum. Their admission fees included two days, and there is a reason for that! It is actually five different museums under one roof. This museum was recommended to us, and we recommend it to anyone visiting Cody. Just be sure to allow plenty of time for the visit! Our first stop was in the Firearms Museum, which was Mike's favorite part of the museum. We spent most of Saturday there. We began the Buffalo Bill Museum tour but wore out and went back to the hotel to rest. The next morning we finished the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Native American Museum and the Natural History Museum. I walked through the Western Art Museum, but Mike opted to sit that out. By this time our backs were protesting. 

It never ceases to amaze me that you can run into people you know no matter where you are. We ran across two couples touring the museum from Idaho that we know from Cowboy Fast Draw! 

On Monday we joined up with a van tour group for a trip into Yellowstone Park. We originally planned to drive through on our own, and that is definitely doable. But after the 10-hour trip to Cody, Mike wasn't exactly excited about driving the several hours to, through and back from Yellowstone. Besides, with Mike driving and me navigating there is great potential for disagreements and tension! So we opted for the tour and have been very glad that we did.

The tour started good enough. We had enjoyable travel companions and an interesting tour guide. He took us to the best places to visit and gave us a running commentary on the sites, history and interesting facts we wouldn't have otherwise known. 

There were six tourists on our trip along with the tour guide. Three of those tourists were siblings visiting from Canada, and the other was a young man visiting from Switzerland. Another couple was scheduled to be on the tour but were marooned in Northern Yellowstone, which should have tipped us off on conditions in the park. So other than the guide, we were the only US citizens on the trip. We had to laugh since every buffalo and elk siting was a monumental, picture-worthy event! And we are just like, "Eh, another buffalo, big deal!" At least they knew better than to get out and try to pet them!

We visited all the geothermic sites. The first few were kind of awesome and stinky, but after a time it ceased to be that exciting. We saw some truly awesome waterfalls, which were running pretty full and wild due to recent heavy rains in the Park. This should have been another omen! I got lots of waterfall pictures, but they are always so disappointing since no camera can capture the awesome site in real life!

Of course, the biggest event in Yellowstone Park is the eruption of Old Faithful, which faithfully erupts approximately every 90 minutes. We arrived with about 45 minutes to spare, but since Old Faithful Lodge was right there, we agreed to spend some time there while we waited. As we walked into the Lodge, the Park employees were posting notices telling everyone that Yellowstone Park was being evacuated due to flooding. At that exact moment, our tour guide began to get phone calls from other tour guides telling him that everyone was under an evacuation order. So we walked over to Old Faithful and took our pictures of it steaming, boarded our van and headed out of the Park. 

On our way out we saw the one wildlife event that was actually something interesting for us, two cub bears playing beside the road! They were the only bears we saw on the trip.

While we were a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see Old Faithful spout, we comforted ourselves with the fact that you can actually watch the eruption on YouTube, and in exchange for missing that event, we gained an interesting story to share about our trip. The one thing we didn't get to do was visit the Tetons. We had planned that for Tuesday, but access to the Tetons from Cody is through the Park...and it was closed! We have decided that this will constitute another trip to Wyoming, this time to the Tetons and hopefully we can visit Yellowstone Park again...without the flooding!

Due to the fact that the entire park was evacuated, Cody got really busy that night. The restaurants were crowded, the museums were busy and crowded, and there were just people everywhere! Fortunately, we had our motel room for the whole week as every place was full!

The next day we did a bit of shopping and went to see a movie, Top Gun Maverick, expecting that the theater would also be crowded, but the 4:00 showing was almost empty! Go figure!

The next morning we instituted a change of plans. We loaded up and headed to Gillette where grandson Dylan is living. We got there in time to take him out to supper and spend the evening visiting with him, which was an unexpected treat. 

On Thursday morning we headed for home, glad to have gone and glad to be heading home. We have determined that while we enjoy some travel, we will never be committed travelers. We enjoy home a bit too much for that.

While the scenery was beautiful and the things we did were interesting and fun, nothing was better than the fact that we did it together, just like we've done most everything for the past 50 years!