The Road To Yellowstone...

Our stay in Boise, and the majority of the drive to West Yellowstone, was comfortable and uneventful and, when you're on a two-way cross country trip, "uneventful" is good.

For the most part, the road we were traveling, US-20, wasn't very busy at all. There was some traffic, of course, but nothing like you would see if you were driving on a freeway around Chicago or Cleveland. Add to that the fact that the scenery out here is so much better and, well, you'll begin to understand why this was, for me, a great drive:

 

We had a few photo ops here and there which, when you get into this part of the country, with its amazing topography, I guess is bound to happen:

We spent the most time out of the car when I spotted to moose (mooses?) in a shallow river. They were a ways away, and it was all I could do to get close enough with the 400mm I had at my disposal:

Despite what we were seeing along the drive, we were eager to get to Yellowstone Park. Jess is a wizard at making hotel reservations on the fly, and she got us a couple of rooms at the Stagecoach Inn in West Yellowstone, which lies just outside the west gate of the park:

The Stagecoach Inn in West Yellowstone, Montana...

The lobby of the Stagecoach Inn. Rather rustic...

You mean your hotel lobby doesn't have these?

The rooms we were in were rather spartan, but they were certainly comfortable.

And haunted.

Before I went to bed, I set the thermostat in my room for 72°. When I woke up, I was shocked at how cold the room was. I looked at the thermostat and it read 63°. Now, perhaps there's some rational explanation for this but, if there is, it completely escapes me. I turned the thermostat up to 78° and, in short order, the room temperature was comfortable.

Now, despite how cold it was in my room, the temperature outside was a completely different story. It was right around this time I began to second guess my decision to leave my winter coat at home:

 

No no no no no no... Just no...

I wasn't quite prepared for how cold it would be up here. Okay, so we're not talking arctic cold, but it was still pretty damn cold. The nice thing is that the temperature went up quite a bit and, if there was no wind, it was actually pretty pleasant.

So, after a stop for breakfast and a walk through one of the umpteen souvenir shops in the area, we decided to make our way to the park. It was a day we'd been looking forward to since we started talking about this trip, and it turned out to be a day we won't forget for some time...