On the Road Again

We left St. George with Dennis and Cheryl on May 31 and spent three weeks in the Utah Parks. After a brief interlude in Salt Lake City, we spent nearly four weeks in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. It was with some regret that we left those beautiful places this morning and headed out the east entrance road towards Cody.

Along the way we ran into our last "animal jam." A grizzly bear had walked across the road and down a hillside to Yellowstone Lake. We joined the group of people watching it from the side of the road, but that bear had decided to take a rest. Ken got a shot of its ear, but that's pretty near all we got to see. We decided to move on, telling ourselves that we've already seen a much more interesting bear (the mom with two cubs). We did get to admire lots of lovely wildflowers along the roadside.

Use your imagination and you may be able to spot the bear's ear....

The road wound up to the Sylvan Pass, with switchbacks and sheer dropoffs and plenty of dramatic scenery.

As we neared Cody, we stopped to visit the Buffalo Bill Dam and Visitor Center on the Shoshone River. It was a lovely place to eat lunch, and we enjoyed looking down the face of the dam 350 feet to the river below.

As we ate, we heard and saw a personal watercraft on the Buffalo Bill Reservoir. My first thought was that at least some places are still wild and Yellowstone Lake doesn't have any personal watercraft zooming around.

We are spending the night at the Absaroka Bay RV Park in Cody. It's in town and parking-lot style, but a decent place to spend the night. We stopped at the Sierra Trading Post, which advertised huge outlet discounts on Columbia clothing and such. We didn't find anything, so we saved some money there 8-)