Gardiner MT

Gardiner MT, elevation 5224' 

This is my first day with no goal or destination. I am tired. The increased elevation isn't helping.

Today I come to believe this postcard will be my only view of Old Faithful, and I laugh.

It snowed overnight, an inch in town but a foot or more at the point up a back road where I decided to turn around before I got into trouble, Suburu Forester notwithstanding.

I saw a thousand blue birds, gathering for a long trek 

somewhere milder than this will be in a few weeks.

 The Yellowstone River exits the Park here at Gardiner as a big and fast flowing a river. 

It rises near the eastern side of the Park and flows past here, north and then east for a total of 692 miles, until it meets the Missouri in North Dakota. 

In 1806 half the group, led by William Clark, 

journeyed east along the Yellowstone from the Bitterroots 

to the Confluence, where they rejoined Meriwether Lewis's group 

and completed the homeward journey to St. Louis. 

The Corps never came up here, north of present-day Livingston. 

One of the party, John Colter, returned the next year. That is another interesting story.

Historic trainbed supported the train that brought earlier tourists up to Gardiner.