No sense in saving the most exciting part of our day to the end, when it actually happened. We were driving down 191 in Montana to West Yellowstone (not to be confused with the main part of Yellowstone, in Wyoming), and he (or she) just ran across the highway in front of us! Luckily, he was a good enough distance away so that we didn't have to worry about hitting him. Marsha tried to snap a picture, but he was too quick.
Okay, now for the rest of our day, which still ended up being pretty awesome. We left Keystone, as well as South Dakota, early this morning for our drive to West Yellowstone. For some reason, we were thinking this was a short drive. But upon further investigation, it was actually to be one of our longest. Back on I-90, of course!
As we headed towards Wyoming, we realized that we were going right by Deadwood. We didn't have time to stop, but we couldn't resist riding through to have a look around. First time we've seen a whole town on the Register of Historic Places. The town was pretty cool, and someplace we'd love to visit if we ever make it up this way again. We also passed through Rapid City, which has statues of every U.S. President on each street corner.
While we were sad to leave South Dakota behind, our timing couldn't have been better. There was a big storm behind us, so we had a good amount of rain before we managed to drive through it.
Then came the downside of our day. Despite the fact that we have our GPS set to stick to main highways, it likes to take us on secondary highways anyway and on more than one occasion when we didn't know enough to question, it has cost us a lot of time. That was the case today. It steered us onto Highway 212 through Wyoming and Montana before eventually rejoining I-90 many hours later. But the worst part was the beginning, which took us through a little town called Belle Fourche, where we got stuck for quite a while. They were having their 4th of July parade and, even though a major highway runs through their town, didn't think to put in a detour (unlike Bozeman, Montana, who wisely did).
By the time we got through Belle Fourche and realized that we should have just stayed on I-90, it was too late to turn around without having to go through town again. So, off we went down a two-lane highway through the corner of Wyoming and across a few hundred miles of Montana farmland. Again, it was literally another one of those "last chance for gas next 150 miles" places. There was one tiny gas station where everyone that was on the highway with us (just a few cars, but a lot for only two pumps) stopped to gas up.
Eventually, we turned south for our final leg to West Yellowstone. There, the countryside was just breathtaking. A river ran along the highway with mountains on either side. Madison played appropriate music from Frontierland to set the mood. That's when we saw the bear and later on, a deer, too. Some of the greatest beauty our country has to offer. Perfect way to spend the 4th.
We finally made it to West Yellowstone more or less on schedule, and found its a little bigger than we expected. After checking into our hotel, we walked the couple of blocks to "Main Street." We stopped for dinner at the Slippery Otter, where I had a bison burger. Madison tried it, but I couldn't get Marsha to, since we'd spent the last couple of days trying to see them.
Finally, we stood outside and watched the local fireworks. Again, a perfect ending to an interesting day.
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