Yellowstone Trip: a Few Interesting Sights from the Trip Home and Some Remarks on the Trip

Mount Rushmore from the road; park still not open

From Gardiner MT we drove to Gillette WY on the first night; Kadoka SD the second night; Albert Lea MN the third night; LaPorte IN the fourth night; and got back to Syracuse in daylight on the fifth day. It can be done! But it is a long slog to do in five days. Going out, I took six days and could have used more.

Five thousand miles total; about 2100 miles in each direction plus 800 miles looking here and there and going down to Jackson and back to Gardiner. 

The battery in the 5 year old Subaru died in the driveway two days later. Lucky!

Badlands at dusk

Rattlesnakes where people are directed to walk their dogs

Fields of sunflowers

 Stylized tipis in many SD rest areas, and in this one a replica of the keelboat, the biggest boat the Corps of Discovery took up the Missouri, right past here and seen today in the distance, from St. Louis in 1804

 Riding rabbit 

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.