Day # 10 - Yellowstone N.P.

This morning we got up and took full advantage of the campground’s $2.00 all you can eat pancake breakfast. It was prepared by an older camper host couple and was very yummy. The best part was it was cheap and we didn’t have to cook or do the dishes! We climbed into the car for the drive to Yellowstone and our first glimpse of America’s first National Park.


The East entrance is 50 miles from Cody. The scenery was beautiful on the drive over, but we were anxious to get into the park. On the way there we stopped to see the Buffalo Bill Dam. It was built in the early 1900’s and was a model for the Hoover Dam. You can walk out over top of the spill way. It was impressive to see the calm reservoir on one side, and then turn around and watch all of that water come rushing out the other. It was very breezy and the kids were ready to get into the visitor center to make yet another “smash” penny for their collections. Boy, I would love to have been the guy who came up with that idea!

As we worked our way up into the mountains to the park, the temperature dropped 30 degrees! We were amazed to still see snow on the ground. The kids threw on their jackets and happily posed in the white stuff. You would have thought that they had never seen snow before. We kept reminding them that we get plenty of it where we live, but I guess the novelty of snow in the summer was just too much.


Yellow stone is nothing short of amazing. It is a place that everyone should visit at least once in their lives! The scenery is breath taking! We came in on the east side, so most of what we saw today was Yellowstone Lake (large enough to create its own weather patterns) and many small waterfalls. We did spot a few buffalo and an elk by the side of the road. We also saw a few of the thermal features venting their sulfur smelling gasses. The east entrance is very mountainous terrain and as we kept rounding corners, we continued to be impressed by the lush green, snow topped mountains being reflected in the still glass like lake. I have never seen anything else quite like it. It was rainy and pretty cold, so we stopped at the visitor center to pick up our National Parks passports for the kids to collect stamps from the various visitor centers from National Parks and Monuments across the country (wish we would have known about it when we were at Mount Rushmore! Oh well, guess we’ll have to go back!). We checked out the lay of the land so to speak and figured out our plan of attack for the next 3 days. We bought a couple trail maps for the areas we wanted to visit and headed back to Cody for the nightly shootout at Buffalo Bill’s Irma hotel and to pack up to move the camper to West Yellowstone, Montana tomorrow.

When we got into town we grabbed a slice of pizza and worked our way over to the Irma hotel and our rented folding chairs for the shootout. The local tourist trolley company will reserve a seat for you so all you have to do is show up right before show time and Tony had stopped b y yesterday when we were downtown and reserved us 5 chairs . With impatient little kids it was well worth 5 bucks! The shootout happens 6 nights a week all summer long at 6:00 p.m. It is a reenactment of a gun fight between Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill. Not sure how historically accurate it was, but it was campy and cheesy and very amusing. All in all, it was a great way to spend some time. The gun shots (blanks obviously) were very loud. They made Abby cover her ears and AJ scream with delight (not sure if he was more happy about the loud bangs or his sister freaking out!) After we walked around Cody a little more, we headed back to get ready to pull out in the morning.