Day 13

Wednesday 28 July

Jackson Hole to Belgrade 297Miles 478 klm

Saying goodbye to Kristy at 6-40am we are on the road the sky is clear and the day is crisp. We ride into Moose and fill the bike and head thru the Grand Teton National Park and keep a look out for early morning animals that may be roaming around.

We have the very early start to beat the crowds in Yellowstone National Park. The Park is some 2.2 million acres that has many natural geysers and a multitude of animal species. Our first tourist stop is to see “Old Faithful” the famous Geyser. We pull up in the parking lot and wander over to the Yellowstone Visitors Centre which is the largest log structure in the world and admire the wonderful wood work, and find that Old Faithfull does not blow until 10-20am so we make our way to the souvenir shop and have a coffee.

We fluked finding the best seats on a verandah that overlooked the park and the geyser. Alan tells us that this structure was threatened in the 1988 forest fires which nearly wiped out the whole of Yellowstone Park.

Old Faithfull blows on time  and it only takes a short time before we are again on the road. We travel a short distance and we are held up by road works for at least 20 minutes which puts us behind time as we have so much to see so little time.

Our next stop is the Upper Water fall and it is just magnificent sight with a huge volume of water that tumbles of huge boulders through a narrow chasm. Next we go to the Lower Falls which is even more magnificent. Then to the place which gives the park its name Yellowstone Canyon at that takes your breath away it is very beautiful, the crowds are getting bigger and it became hard to find parking spaces, so we head off to the limestone cliffs and then stop at an overlook and have our chicken lunch that Kristy lovingly packed for us, and afterwards head out of the park, again we get caught up with the road works.

Now we head for Montana the weather has warmed up considerably and we have unzipped our jackets to let the air in as we ride through valleys and follow a river.

We see a storm is brewing in the mountains and with a cool change came the rain, it was a wonderful relief from the heat, arrived at our Super 8 motel at 6pm and went to a truckies restaurant for dinner.

I am sure it can’t get better than this.