Vacation '08, day 3

Leaving Hill City in the morning, we face a route choice: take the southern loop by the Crazy Horse monument, or take the north loop by Devil's Tower. We choose the former, and get a really good view of the monument from the road (although we don't do the full tour due to time constraints.) Crazy Horse's face is complete, and the horse's head is being roughed out. We definitely want to come back & see it in a decade or so when it's more complete! We get a few brief glimpses of Devil's Tower on the horizon, but no more than that.

After that it's just a long drive across Wyoming.

Eventually we leave the plains and start climbing up into the hills. What a view we see from the turnouts!

Yellowstone, as everyone probably knows by now, is a caldera volcano that sits at about 8000 feet. (Thus, all the well-known thermal activity.) The drive approaching the east gate is incredibly beautiful... lodgepole pines crowding along rugged hills, picturesque creeks winding through the valleys.

One of the major thrills of Yellowstone is wildlife-spotting. Our big score today is a wolf, loping through a meadow near the lake. He causes a big old traffic tie-up, too, before he disappears into the timber. (Wolves and bears are good for the biggest traffic jams.)

We also see a young male elk just off Fishing Bridge, horns just starting to bud. (We saw a flock of bighorn sheep, too, and a couple of magnificent bison just outside the park, but didn't get pictures. I quickly learn that it's advisable for the shotgun passenger to ride with the camera in her lap, because you just don't know what you'll see around the next turn.)

It's dark by the time we get checked into the cabin; we don't have much energy for more than a cup-o-noodles dinner and we're ready to fall into bed. Tomorrow we'll explore.