We only had a few days in Emigrant south of Livingston and about an hour from Bozeman. Jan was originally going to get her hair done in Bozeman, but after we looked at our short time there, she opted to put it off until Missoula.
On our agenda was a trip into Bozeman to go to Costco, grocery store, and of course lunch.
We ate a good lunch at Revelry, and a good thing we arrived early because by the time we left there was a line.
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| Jan's fried chicken salad |
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| My chicken caesar wrap |
We made it a whole day with some side trips on the way back. That left our Yellowstone foray. Since it is 36 miles just to the North Entrance, and another 36 miles to Lamar Valley, we left before 0500am to get to Lamar by dawn, it is a little unnerving driving win the dark with all the animals around. Lamar is our favorite location in the park, usually there are hundreds of Bison, tons of antelopes, and if you're lucky wolves or grizzlies, but not this year, it was almost deserted! But we got our parking spot to wait for sunrise and had our delicious BLT breakfast:-)
And after an hour or so with no joy we drove farther east almost to the Northeast Entrance, turned around and decided to head south towards Fishing Bridge. As we were leaving, we came upon a gaggle of vehicles and it truly looked like the people were actually looking at something, it's funny lots of theses gaggles are monkey see monkey do, where as if they see bunch of cars stopped, they stop even though there isn't anything there. Well, this time was real, a lone black wolf was running by itself to the west, he was too far away to get a picture, you'll have to take my word on it:-) Funny, we've never seen a lone wolf before.
On the way out of Lamar we got a good look at the new incredible bridge they are building to replace the original bridge that was damaged in the 2022 floods.
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| A little hard to see in this pic, but the road ahead of us is the original bridge which is probably 70' off the water and it looks like the new bridge is 180', wow! |
On the way to Fishing Bridge we took the road to the Mt Washburn overlook, this road had been closed the last few times we have visited.
Then after we'd come down the mountain and went around a curve, this little guy surprised us right on the edge of the road.
But, where was mom?
As we made our way south we saw tons of bison, hundreds in fact, they just weren't in Lamar like usual, also saw a lot of antelope here and there. We poked around Fishing Bridge a bit then continued down along the lake to West Thumb, and then turned north to complete our circle.
We continued by Old Faithful and before Madison, we found a spot for our decadent lunch along the Firehole River.
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| Beautiful view |
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| Incredible lunch |
Beautiful views on the way back to Mammoth.
Then when we hit Mammoth, it was time for coffee.
Then leaving Gardiner going back north we saw an unusual sight, a lone elk cow walking along in the Yellowstone River!
But looking farther a huge herd was up in a farmer's field about 1/4 mile away.
We had a great day, 250+ miles, we love Yellowstone, we've probably visited the park at least 25 times and it never gets old.
Here's a reference to my place names.
On to Missoula!
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