On Tuesday, I drove to Gardiner, Montana, which is just outside the Northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park. When I arrived, I realized that one of the fender liners on my car had fallen off during my drive. It’s the one that’s right above the tire that I had to replace in Chicago. That section of my car might be cursed. There was so much wind during my drive that my mpg was awful and my mirror squeaked and drove me crazy most of the drive, so I’m guessing the liner was loose and the wind was a little too strong for it. I’ll have to deal with it once I’m done with the next few weeks of touring national parks and another short stint in Canada.

I had two days to see Yellowstone. The drive up the mountains into the park, is gorgeous. I kept wanting to look to the side instead of keeping my eyes on the road. 

My first stop was Mammoth Hot Springs. It was there that I learned that nature can be beautiful and smell like fart at the same time. The colors and shapes of the terraces and hot springs are amazing, but if you get too close, the smell of the sulphur can be a little too much. I had to cover my nose and mouth at one point so I wouldn’t gag.

After the hot springs, I explored the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Initially, I was planning to hike the canyon, but after learning that there had been a bear attack on Monday and two hikers had to be airlifted out, I got scared of hiking. I know that bear attacks are rare and I had bear spray with me, but it still scared me. I’ve never been close to a bear before and I don’t want my first time to be when I’m hiking alone. Instead, I drove along the canyon and stopped at a bunch of lookouts to see it from different perspectives. At one of the lookouts, I saw a yellow-bellied marmot.

When I had looked at the canyon from all angles, I drove to Lamar Valley, known for all the wildlife you can see there. The animals are most active at dawn and dusk and it was still a few hours before dusk, but I was already in the park, so I went anyway. There were bison everywhere. So many bison. Everywhere. They even caused traffic jams a few times when they started crossing the street, but then couldn’t make up their minds about whether they wanted to fully cross or stay in the middle of the road. I also saw a lonely antelope in the valley. 

When I was driving back to my cabin, I noticed a bunch of cars parked, so I stopped to see why everyone was there. They said that high up on the mountain there was a wolf den and that the wolves usually start coming out near dusk. People with powerful binoculars saw one come out. If I was looking at the place the wolf was, but I couldn’t make it out because human vision isn’t good enough for that, does that count as seeing a wolf? It was in my field of vision after all. I thought about staying a while in case I could see a wolf for real, but I was hungry and I chose food over wolves, so I drove home. On my way out of the park, I saw a few deer crossing the street.  

I was exhausted at the end of that day. The 3 days of driving to Yellowstone were a lot. I guess there’s something about sitting in one position for that long without doing much that is tiring. I was sore after the drive too. Luckily, I don’t have to drive 3 days in a row for the rest of my road trip. That first day in Yellowstone, I drove 6 hours because the park is so big. So I basically drove all day for 4 days in a row. I decided to take the next day easy.

I stayed at my cabin on Thursday morning and drove to the park after lunch. On my drive in, I saw an elk, but there was no place to pull over, so I couldn’t take a picture of it. I also saw a big scary black bird. My first stop was Grand Prismatic Spring. It was really cool to see and definitely my favorite spring in the park, at least out of the ones I saw. There are many springs that I didn’t get to see.

Then, I went to see Old Faithful, a geyser that erupts about every 90 minutes. I got really lucky because it erupted 5 minutes after I arrived. After it was done, I went into the visitor center that’s nearby and happened to be there when they announced that Beehive, a geyser that only erupts once a day, would erupt in 15-20 minutes. I headed straight there, which was a good thing because it erupted earlier than expected, 10 minutes later. Beehive was more impressive than Old Faithful because the eruption was taller and lasted longer. The steam coming out of it even formed a rainbow over the river that’s next to the geyser.

After that, I drove back to my cabin and again saw a lot of people parked on the side of the road, so I stopped too. At Yellowstone, you should always stop if there are many cars parked. You are guaranteed to see cool animals. This time, there were 3 grizzly bears up on a hill on the other side of the river. I watched them for a while before heading home.

Yesterday morning, as I was packing my car, I saw an elk on the street. I also met Lauren, who was staying at the same cabins I was. She’s an an Irish American woman living in Portugal and she loves Ecuador. She studied there in the 80s and has been back multiple times, mostly to the Galapagos Islands. I told her I’m in the process of getting Portuguese citizenship and she gave me her number so I can ask her any questions I have about Portugal. Then we both went our separate ways. I drove to Glacier National Park, where I’ll be for the next few days.

As the bartender at Nautical suggested, I drove through Badlands National Park on my way to Keystone. When I visit national parks, I buy a pin and a magnet. In order for a park to count as “visited”, I have to do at least one hike. That’s why I don’t have a pin or magnet for the Smoky Mountains, even though the picture on the home page of this blog was taken there. Since I didn’t have much time, I found the shortest “hike”, which was a 5 minute walk on a boardwalk. Technically, that’s not a hike, but I make the rules and I’m able to bend them as I wish.

After my extremely difficult and exhausting hike, I stopped at a bunch of lookout points throughout the park. The views from all the lookout points were so similar but at the same time so different. I kept looking at the same types of rocks with the same colors, but their shapes, sizes, and arrangements all made for very different breathtaking views at each of my stops. Eventually, I had to convince myself to stop stopping at every lookout point or I’d never make it to Keystone.

I arrived in Keystone at around 6:30 pm. I asked for dinner recommendations at my hotel and they told me that all restaurants in the town were already closed. I was very surprised, but it’s a tiny tourist town and it’s currently the off-season, so it sort of makes sense. But 6:30 pm is still way too early to close, in my opinion. 7 or 8 pm would be a little more reasonable, but no one asked me what I think.

The closest open restaurant was 30 minutes away in Rapid City, so I went to Mt Rushmore first, since it was 5 minutes from my hotel. My original plan was to walk the 0.6 mi trail there, but I was hungry and the altitude had me huffing and puffing just from going up a few stairs, so I quickly looked at the carvings and went to find dinner and get some sleep.

That’s it for my quick drive through South Dakota. Next stop, Yellowstone National Park.

While driving to Asheville today, I stopped at Congaree National Park. I did a hike and had lunch there. It was a great way to break up my drive. Congaree has the largest intact expanse of old-growth floodplain forest in the southeastern US. Since it’s on a floodplain, the forest is constantly changing because of the water. It’s currently not flooded, but I could see areas where the roots of the trees were still underwater. When it floods, the water is so high, that even parts of the boardwalk I walked on today are underwater!

The walk was nice, but it’s definitely not one of the most beautiful national parks in the country. If I ever go back, I’d love to see the park from a kayak to see it from a different perspective.