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Westbound Again

West Yellowstone MT May 1, 2012

Last night’s weather was pretty sloppy. We had a frozen rain/snow mix and it left about an inch of slushie on everything but it was mostly gone by 7:00am when I got up. The forecast for today was a “chance” of snow and it certainly met that goal. It was spitting flurries here in the campground when we left at about 9:30 on our way into the park to hit the only other open roads to Old Faithful and then Canyon Village. The ranger at the gate warned us that it was “snowing real heavy” at Old Faithful but it was a lot worse on the way than it was at OF. About 5 miles into the park it started snowing pretty heavy and it continued almost to Old Faithful. They already had the snowplows on the roads, but not in the direction we were headed so the 4 wheel-drive got a workout and it dragged us through the slush all day without a whimper. We got to OF and wandered around the new Visitor Center, then sloshed across the street for some lunch, then back to the VC to watch the very end of Old Faithful’s noon eruption. From there we decided to head toward Canyon Junction on the only other open road in the park – this is where the snow got really enthusiastic. We parked on North Rim Drive and walked the short trail down to the Lower Falls viewpoint. The snow was pretty heavy and blowing sideways while we were there but we spent a few minutes talking to a ranger about some wildlife spotting areas and come to find out, his mother lives in Hallandale –small world. We left there for the drive back to the bus – the only other place we could go other than home was back up to Lamar Valley, but with all the snow we figured the trip up to Mammoth Hot Springs and down into Lamar would be sloppy and slow, and we certainly didn’t want to have to backtrack through the same as it got darker so we will go back later. We got home, read some Emails and then decided to go get some pizza at the Wild West Pizzeria down the street. It was surprisingly good. West Yellowstone MT is not known as the pizza capital of the world, but it hit the spot. The weather right now is bright and sunny and the forecast for tomorrow is better than today’s…but that doesn’t mean anything around here. We are a little stumped as to what to do from this point on. The majority of the rest of the park roads are due to open Friday which will open up a lot more areas for us to explore, but we also want to head to the other side of the park to Powell and Lovell WY to see our nephews. The two ways to do that are to take a 6 hour drive north from here to I-90 in MT, then east to Laurel and south to Lovell. Or, we hang around here till Friday and head through the park - if the road opens as scheduled – and save almost 2 hours of driving. Sounds like a coin toss is in our future.

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