Sunday Sunday Sunday!!

This morning we finally had blue sky and no new snow on the ground. It was still windy and cold but I was thrilled to see the sun, it was starting to feel like Portland. We headed out of Dornan's about 10am and headed north through the park on the way to Yellowstone. We planned to run up the west side of Yellowstone and around to the northeast exit to get to the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway and then over to Red Lodge in Montana. We stopped off at Signal Mountain in the Tetons and got to a great photo spot about halfway up the mountain. Eventually I was tired out from running up and down the hill (at over 6k ft) so we headed back down and continued out of the park. Russ had remembered a campsite that had access to the lake and great views of the Tetons so we planned on stopping there. It's great traveling with someone who has local knowledge of pretty much the entire west side of the US, you avoid all of the usual scenic viewpoints and stop at less well known ones, better pics and a more interesting trip. Anyway we found the campsite and hiked in to the lake and it was as promised, great views of the mountains. We decided it'd be alot more fun to hike back up to the road instead of heading back to the campsite. This of course presented a challenge because we couldn't just walk along the lake since there were several streams that fed it that needed to be crossed. The first crossing was easy but the next couple we had to stack enough driftwood to build a bridge to span a decent 4ft stream. We finally made it back up to the road after some bridge building and bushwhacking through the thickets and with a ton of great pictures.
Back at the camp we ran into a bicyclist who informed us that the south entrance to Yellowstone was closed! That put a serious crimp in the plans so we had to backtrack all the way back through Jackson Hole, back over the pass, north past the west side of the Tetons and then into the park at West Yellowstone. It added about 2hrs to the drive but really it was well worth it. We motored through Yellowstone without stopping since we were so far behind schedule and wanted to get as much driving done during the day as possible. We finally made it out of the park and up to Hwy296, my favorite road on the planet. Except for two slow movers we had the entire 45 mile stretch to ourselves and it was fantastic! The first car we caught up to probably had a several minute head start on us and was quite surprised when we showed up in their rear view mirror :) We eventually rolled into Red Lodge around 9:30 this evening. Tomorrow we head up the Bear Tooth Pass and maybe back to Hwy 296. We'll be here for 2 or 3 more days so lots of playtime :)

Pics from today

Trip Stats:
414 miles
8hrs of driving
50mph average speed
29mpg
20757 ft climbed
one gas stop