7-16-2020 thru 7-19-2020

WARNING: Long blog post....I promise the pictures are worth it!

July 16th we were on the road by 8:00am so we could get to Yellowstone National Park by 5pm. We had about a 400 mile drive.

We saw several trucks full of potatoes, I guess that is to be expected since Idaho is the potato state.

Here are a couple of shots I got on the drive to Yellowstone. Obviously the city of West Yellowstone are Packers fans 💚💛🏈.

Well, we had a mess up with our RV Garmin or maybe it was the address in RV Trip Wizard app. I entered the address that was in the app and we believe the Garmin took us there but that is not the address of Grant Village campground. The drive was awesome but we ended up on the road over an hour longer than what we planned.

And, it gets even better. Online for this campground it allowed us to book a site for our 40’ rig but when we got here, we found out the campsite we booked online would not accommodate our rig. They were nice enough to give us another site, well, that was not an easy feat either. First the turn into G Loop was too tight for us to turn so we had to pull up the wrong way to disconnect the Jeep. We had to back the rig up and attempt to make the turn. The RV now has some new scratches due to the tight corners in the loop. We get to the site and we didn’t think we could pull in but backing in was even trickier. We ended up pulling in to the site but the trees on both sides made it so we can’t open the long slide…I never realized how convenient it is to have that slide open. The pull-out couch will not open, the master bathroom door is narrow, and it is hard to get around our bed. Not ideal for 4 days but we had to make due, we weren’t going to find any other place.

Casen made friends soon after we arrived. One of the boys parents let the boys ride their bikes.

Friday morning (July 17) we woke to 52 degrees in the coach. Rules or not, even though it was 6:30 am, we started the generator (rule is no generator 8pm to 8am). We were out the door at 7:30 am, first stop was Old Faithful. Casen was so excited to see it. We only had to wait about 30 minutes for it to go off.

The next stops were Midway Geyser Crater

Excelsior Geyser Crater,

and Grand Prismatic Spring

We took a scenic drive through Firehole Canyon Drive and saw Firehole Falls.

Our next stop was Gibbens Falls

Then Virginia Cascades

The highlight of the day was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone Park. Lower Yellowstone Falls was really cool. We hiked the north rim trail, got pictures up on top and walked to the bottom. We found out just how out of shape we have gotten since COVID shut down the fitness centers.

Next, we got pictures of Grand View

We figured we might as well see it all so we drove to the south side and got pictures of the Upper Yellowstone Falls.

We got some pictures of some elk and Buffalo.

And, we added Wyoming to our map.

2nd full day at Yellowstone started with another stop at Old Faithful. Casen liked it so much he wanted to go back. We could see it was going off when we were pulling into the parking lot so we had 90 minutes to burn before the next time. We decided to walk around the geysers and pools. While walking back to the sitting area for Old Faithful we found a sign that said there was a different vantage point of viewing, it was a half mile trail and 200 foot climb. Another climb we discovered we were out of shape but the view was spectacular.

Our next stop was West Yellowstone outside the west entrance of the park. We had made called to make a reserve for a place to stay Tuesday night but had to leave a message. Our cell service was non-existance in the park except for very early in the morning with literally only 1 text message going out, no email coming in and forget about Facebook. We got a voice mail that came in early saying they were full so we thought we could get WiFi outside the park to find a different place to stay. We did get wifi and found another place. They had a lot of cute shops and we got some ice cream.

We got back to the site and Casen was begging us to go swimming. Check out the article, we told him it was too cold but he insisted. We thought he would be in just a few seconds, he lasted quite awhile but was cold when he got out.