Trip to Minnesota - Day 2
After claiming our free breakfast and checking out of the West Yellowston
Hampton Inn & Suites Wednesday morning, we stopped to fill up on gasoline
and drinks at a Texaco station. We paid $1.53 per gallon for gasoline.
We headed back into Yellowstone Park waving our precious $20 park pass at the person in the toll booth at the West Entrance. This time we headed north to see the Yellowstone Grand Canyon.
We stopped at Lookout Point which is situated on a ledge which
jets out somewhat above the Canyon. Across and to the east you can see
Artist Point another jetting ledge which I assume-- from its name--
is favored by painters and photographers.
Our next stop was the Lower Falls, another jetting ledge which gives you an awesome view of a waterfall formed by the Yellowstone River falling into the canyon. There is an Upper Falls point near the actually waterfall as well, but we didn't stop there.
At Lower Falls lookout point, I saw a small squirrel crouched on the sidewalk. The small animal did not appear to be afraid of people and merely stood on its hind legs and chewed on a nut as we approached. I was amazed at how close it would let me come with a camera to take its picture.
The view of the canyon and the falls of the Yellowstone River were spectacular as usual. After snapping our pictures we continued east past Yellowstone Lake. The road around the lake was being totally reconstructed with new cement and rock barrier walls and support walls for the mountains next to the lake. Again we had to wait about 20 minutes as a pilot car brought traffic through heading the other direction and then turned around to lead us through the construction zone. The pilot car was a rusty Ford Pinto. Now I knew what happened to all the Pintos I used to see on the road years ago. Either they had blown up from rear collisions or were being used by construction companies.
The road east of the East Entrance to Yellowstone Park was also under construction. There was little or no pavement for roughly 20 miles as construction crews were grading a new, wider road to Yellowstone and putting in new bridges over streams and rivers.
As we approached Cody, Wyoming we drove by Buffalo Bill Reservoir, a reservoir just west of Cody. A long tunnell took our car through a mountain adjacent to the reservoir dam and deposited us on the other side just outside of Cody. That was cool.
In Cody, we found a Taco Bell for lunch. Christine was very pleased to see a Taco Bell because it signified personally to her that we had finally returned to what she could call civilization.
An interesting note about Cody Wyoming. This small town holds a "World Famous" rodeo EVERY NIGHT between June and August. That's a lot of rodeos!
This Taco Bell did not serve the quesadillas that Christine had come to love in Utah but served the same green sauce used on the quesadillas in single serving packages next to the mild and hot sauces.
After filling our gas tank again, we headed out of Cody along US highway
14. After passing through Greybull we headed up into Shell Canyon. This was
hard work for our car but took us through beautiful, picture-
After going over Granite Pass at an elevation of 8950 feet, we came into a meadow covered with colorful wild flowers and green grass. The wide meadow begged me to stop and capture the image on film. As I snapped the photo a motorcylist whizzed by going the other direction.
We then travelled along the tops of the mountains where more wildflowers and grass grew. Tall pine trees were plentiful and interesting rock formations were everywhere. This road was marked as a Forest Service Scenic Byway and signs indicated numerous historic and geologic spots of interest.
We then began descending into a canyon carved by the Tongue River. Along the way we caught glimpses of the land east of the mountains which was mostly flat. You could see clear to Illinois, I'll bet!
We dropped down into two little towns called Dayton and Ranchester after which we got on Interstate 90 -- the first interstate freeway we travelled on in our trip. At 85 miles per hour, we were in Sheridan, Wyoming in no time at all.
Sheridan, Wyoming
Sheridan made a very good impression on Christine and I. The people we ran into were all very kind and friendly.
When we first arrived in Sheridan, we drove through to check out the area. We started at the south end and drove north down Main Street. Toward the north end I spotted a computer store and decided to stop there and ask if anyone knew where I could get Internet access. The person I talked to told me I could get online at the library and pointed me in the general direction. Christine located the library on a map of the city which was in our road atlas and we found it in no time.
At the library we talked to the friendly woman at the front desk and told her we were passing through town and wanted to obtain Internet access. She directed us to a room where two PCs running Windows 95 sat. A young girl was sitting at one using Netscape and listening to her headphones. I took the other machine and ran Windows 95's telnet program (yuck!) and managed to check my e-mail and reply to a couple of messages.
After our visit to the library we checked in at the Holiday Inn hotel. After taking our bags to our room, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. Christine had the chicken fettucine alfredo and I had the clubhouse sandwich. The service was excellent and the food was very tasty.
Then we went to our room and after I failed to persuade Christine to let me order a "Late-Night Cinema" movie, we ordered Jerry Maguire. Unfortunately, the tape was worn out and the picture was filled with video noise. The sound contained a low pitched hum throughout the movie as well. On top of this, we couldn't get the closed captioning captions to appear. When we checked out the next morning, we asked to have the movie removed from our invoice.
After the film, Christine and I decided to try out the swimming pool. After swimming around for a little while we slipped into the hottub and waved at people outside the hotel windows who walked by. When that got old we went back to our room and crashed.
