Road Trip Day 4
I woke up this morning to the sounds of a kid the next campsite over whining to his mother "but I can't go to the bathroom because the bison is in the way!" Still kind of sleepy, I found this an improbable thing to say, but I told my now-awakening tentmate about it anyway. He was the first to unzip the tent and stick his head out. The ensuing conversation went something like this:
Trevor: Uh, remember last night how that ranger told us to stay at least 25 yards from wild animals in the park?
Bill: Yeah?
Trevor: Yeeeeah, I don't think we're that far away from that Buffalo over there.
Yes, we awoke, along with hundreds of our fellow campers, to the sight of several bison grazing nonchalantly in the middle of the campground. The closest one to us was basically across the road from our campsite, but who knows how close they came while we were sleeping. It was one of the more interesting mornings I could recall, in any case.
After striking camp (keeping a watchful eye on the bison- they can gore tourists at any time according to the flyer) We headed on our merry way toward the north part of the park. We had to backtrack a ways, back past Mud Volcano and Sulphur Cauldron, but soon we were on different roads. We stopped at Tower Fall and Petrified Tree. There used to be three petrified trees in the area, but way-back-when people took chunks as souvenirs. Now there's a fence around the remaining petrified redwood.
We continued on our way, stopping at an interpretive trail about the northern range. Trevor particularly enjoyed this due to his fondness for interpretive signage. There was a lot of it! Soon we has made it to mammoth Hot Springs, where we took a drive around a loop with views of the geothermal terraces. The size of the terraces amazed us. After that, it was a short trip north across the Montana state border (State number 26!) and shortly after that, through the Roosevelt Arch and out of the park.
There is a small town, Gardiner, just outside of the north park entrance. We filled up on gas there and continued north on U.S. 89. At Livingston, we had a quick lunch and reprovisioned at Albertson's. Soon we were headed west on Interstate 90. I was under the belief that Montana freeways had unlimited speed limits, but they were posted to a paltry 75! Also, there was probably 10 times more road construction in Montana than on the rest of our trip combined. So our hoped-for dreams of really opening it up didn't really come to fruition (at least not when I was driving).
At Butte, we turned north back onto Interstate 15. We made a quick loop through Helena to see the state capitol. It looked like a neat town, but we pressed on northward, through Great Falls, stopping for gas at a small spot called Vaughn. As the sun was falling, we finally came to the railroad town of Shelby, where we had a room for the night at a motel. It was pleasant to shower again (The NPS campgrounds were showerless for all intents and purposes). The sky stayed light for a very long time- well past 10. We had driven quite a bit north in one day, and the sunset was noticibly later.
July 15, 2003 11:59 PM