Day 4: Bighorn Mountains

Today we will travel to Yellowstone National Park (finally!) by driving through the Bighorn Mountains. As soon as we leave Sheridan it becomes clear that this day is not going to be the most efficient of our journey. The drive from Sheridan to West Yellowstone should take about 5 and a half hours, but because of the many viewpoints and other nice scenery in the Bighorn Mountains that schedule seems really impossible. Every time we agree that we stopped for the last time, whatever beautiful environment may come, things get more beauty and we just cannot refuse to stop for a moment. In some places the fall is doing his job and colors the leaves georgious yellow and orange, in other places very nice rockformations, lakes and waterfalls attract our attention. This mountainarea is much more beautiful than I could ever imagine (see photoalbum).

After we could finally let go of the Bighorn Mountains we are already on the road for 4 hours and we have still 4 hours to drive! Never the less, tourists as we are, we take a unhardened sideroad for 15 minutes to see a dinosaur footprint site. The landscape we see over there is unbelievable, so abandonned and full of red colors and lineair rockformations. Unfotrunately the dinosaur footprints are a little disappointing. Only thing we can see are some very small (like 10 cm) footprints consisting of 3 triangular holes, and that’s after searching for 5 minutes. But the idea that those animals walked here 167 million years ago is very interesting, and so agree the little schoolchildren who came here today for a thorough investigation of the site.

At about 18.00 (after all the delay and yes, another Subwaysandwich) we enter Yellowstone Park at the eastern entrance. Immediately our attention goes to the white, leaveless trees and the snowy peaks we see in the far distance; again a complete other environment worth taking pictures. At Yellowstone Lake we spot our first Geysers, in fact steamy smoke, stinking like rotten eggs, just blowing from holes in the ground. Very strange to see this phenomenon for the first time, it’s a bit unreal. Later on we see more of them, sometimes in combination with small pools of boiling water. The geothermal activity in this park is really visible and we didn’t even see a real geyser in action yet (a thing we hopefully will see tomorrow).

At 19.00 we arrive at West Yellowstone, a small place just outside the west entrance of the park. Here we will stay the next 3 nights at the Dude/Roundup motel to explore the park. Our hotelroom is exectly the same as those of yesterday and the days before; just 2 big and nice queenbeds, a good bathroom and television. Only thing that isn’t available this time is the wireless internet, so the posts and pictures might be a little later than you are all used to!