Chop Chop Billy Goat

It is so crazy beautiful here!! The trees. The rivers. The sky. The clouds. The bison. The geysers.

These photos do not do Yellowstone or our campground justice …. but here you go ….

Today we settled in to a beautiful campground just outside the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park. A river runs along one side of our campsite, a herd of bison are grazing across the river, and there are snow capped mountains in the distance. The temperature is 66 degrees, which feels pretty pretty good to desert rats used to 106 in June.

Getting to this paradise was a bit of a slog. Wednesday we put in close to ten hours driving from Bryce Canyon to Idaho Falls. Although the speed limit was 80 (!) on the interstate in Utah, our rig is happiest between 55 and 60, so it took a lot longer than Google Maps predicted. Rather than try to find a campground in Idaho Falls (about two hours from Yellowstone), we decided to spend the night boondocking in the parking lot of a Walmart. It didn’t make sense to spend the time and money on setting up in a campground when we were planning to get going first thing in the morning to head for Yellowstone. Camping at Walmart was pretty nice. We got some shopping done, used the restrooms, and a nearby hotel generously provided wifi service.

After reading mixed reviews about some of the campgrounds in Yellowstone, and about people scrambling to grab limited campsites, we decided to camp at Bakers Hole Forest Service Campground just outside the park. The minute we pulled in we knew we had made the right decision. There were lots of nice spots available and the setting was gorgeous.

After three long travel days in less than a week we are going to stay put for a while, at least for three days, and use the dinghy to take some day trips to Old Faithful and other Yellowstone must-sees.

Fantastic hike into the canyon, walking amongst the hoodoos (the odd-shaped rocks).

Today we drove to Bryce Canyon national park. We arrived at about five o’clock, set up and had dinner. After dinner we saw the canyon. It was so beautiful I can’t even began to put it into words. It had so many rock columns that were stuck together to make different walls. The colors were amazing. There was some white, but also orange, pink, red, and a beautiful combination of the three. I can’t wait to hike down there! On the drive there I read a legend about how the canyon was made. The legend is that People of Legend lived in a beautiful city that Coyote made them. Then they started being bad to Coyote and he turned them into stone. Cool and weird legend, huh? Trip is going well so far….