| Yet another Teepee greeting us when we woke up... Right next to the hotel no less! |
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We spent this day driving across the beautiful state of Montana. Sarah insisted on coming here, and I of course could not pass up the opportunity to add one more state to those I have visited.
| Yet another Teepee greeting us when we woke up... Right next to the hotel no less! |
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Here are a few photos taken off the side of Interstate 90 through southern Montana...
| The beautiful Big Sky State... | |
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Now as much as the purpose of a vacation is to "get away from it all," there always will be an attempt for reality to encroach when you really don't want it to. There was an accident which backed up traffic and gave us a nice reminder of home!
| Traffic Jams, Montana Style! | |
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After driving for almost forever, we eventually made it to the intersection of Interstate 90 and US 89, which is the North-South highway through Yellowstone. We stopped at a very oddly named gas station:
| Who thinks up this stuff? Are they related to people who see ulterior meanings in these names? |
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We continued south on US 89 towards Gardiner, which is the town right outside of the north entrance to Yellowstone. It was at this point we completely lost any signal at all on our cell phones. The funny part about this was that Cingular had called my phone to try to sell me an upgrade on Sarah's phone right when the phone cut out. That would not be the last I would hear from them! We arrived mid-afternoon and got a hotel, we decided to use this extra time to do a little more sightseeing before the big trip into the park the next day.
| Arch Marking the Northern Entrance to Yellowstone National Park. | |
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Ahhh... the lasting legacy of President General Ulysses S. Grant. As we paid the user fee and headed into the park itself, we were greeted by such a bewildering arrangement of signs telling us what was illegal that I would have otherwise thought I was driving into New Jersey. The funny part was the government chose to put this particular rule on its own sign:
| I wonder if this applies to the animals in the park as well? |
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And now without further ado... our first glimpses of Yellowstone National Park!
| Pictures taken at dusk | |
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Not too long after we took these pictures, it got dark and we headed back to the hotel. One thing these pictures do not show are all the elk which were roaming around near us. Of course lack of light did not stop Sarah from trying to take a picture of one up close anyway:
| And you thought Mordor was scary? |
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And that was the last thing we saw before we went to bed that night!