June 24 & 25: Last Day at Camp and Heading East

We woke to another beautiful, chilly morning. Craig made breakfast and coffee, as he did every morning, and after our warm meal we broke camp. A few nights before I had expressed the feeling that we could just keep going, keep camping, for a much longer period of time. We had reached a groove, or at least Craig and I had. The girls, particularly Julia, were beginning to show signs of fatigue. Yellowstone, with it's wide ranging sites, meant that Julia hadn't been able to take a nap in days. She was burned out, begging us for a hotel nearly every day.

I wandered around the campsite to take a few more pictures, and then we packed the van and got on the road. We planned to exit the park through the Lamar Valley. We had high hopes that we might see an elusive Moose, as our list of animal sightings lacked this creature. We climbed in elevation with snow on either side of the van, and as we began our descent into the valley we were stopped short by an enormous RV which blocked the road. The driver had stopped to get a better view of this:



One last grizzly to bid us farewell. After craning our necks and jostling the girls to get a better view, we continued on down into the valley where herds of bison roamed, mothers and babies, more animals than we could count.



We also managed to see a black bear as he scrambled through the tumbleweed, avoiding the throngs of tourists with cameras in hand, and later we came upon a group of people with telescopes, scouting the cliffs for wolves, another animal that didn't make it on our list. As we exited the park through the Silver Gate at Cooke City, I gave up on seeing a moose, only to be surprised again:



The road we traveled was familiar to me. I had spent most of two summers in this same area learning how to make geological maps (and later teaching new students to do the same). Being in Wyoming produced complicated emotions for me, a longing for goals and pursuits that I'd never capitalized upon, remembering a life that could have taken me in a very different direction. Thankfully, with a squeeze of my partner's hand and a nuzzle from my girls, I recalled the great fortune I have in living this life, with my family, and more love than I could imagine.

Though we only drove about 100 miles that day, it took us seven hours to get to Cody. We decided to splurge with a suite in a motel (don't worry, Julia approved this place even though it wasn't a hotel). There were two pools and a playground. Civilization tasted sweet to Grace and Julia. We did the touristy thing and ate dinner at Buffalo Bill Cody's Irma Restaurant and fell into our soft beds with full bellies.

The next morning we stuck around Cody to visit the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, a complex that houses numerous museums. In particular, I wanted Craig to see the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, and the girls convinced us to stay and visit the Draper Museum of Natural History. This meant we got on the road well after lunch and needed to cover a lot of ground. We wanted to make it over the Bighorn Mountains and east of Sheridan. This made for an arduous day with tempers and tears (and a near stranding in the mountains with an empty gas tank). When we checked into the Days Inn at Gillette, I felt like Julia, ready for a temper tantrum. Hotels with pools do wonders for our family though, and we went to bed eager for the next day. Devil's Tower, here we come.

Here are the pictures from our drive out of the park. No pictures in Cody. I'm not sure why. Also no pictures in the Bighorns, which is a total bummer, those mountains are awesome.