We left Kalispell Montana on Saturday (Aug 31) and came to West Yellowstone! The views on the drive were beautiful. I realize I have said this about every state….but Montana is gorgeous. I can’t seem to find better words for all we’ve seen. I need to dust off my thesaurus… but geez let’s all just agree… America is just beautiful. 🙂

My advice to you if you’re making this drive from Glacier to Yellowstone is… do not leave Kalispell without a full tank of gas. We (I) chose to take the shorter, scenic route through all the national forests and there were no gas stations and no cell service. Duh. I forgot what a scenic route instead of an interstate could really mean out west! I was sweating hard that last hour as my bladder was completely full and Betty’s gas tank was getting completely empty. We finally got cell service and I saw we had 20 miles to a gas station with 24 miles of gas left! Ah! What a rookie mistake. The last few miles I don’t remember breathing at all. As we came to Deer Lodge MT, Betty rolled into the gas station on fumes and she wasn’t even in park before I jumped out and ran inside! I don’t know who breathed a bigger sigh of relief. So if you’re gonna take a scenic route be prepared to pay the price. 🙂

It was about a 7 hour drive but we were so excited to see Yellowstone that we decided to pop in real quick that night to check it out. Everybody who knows Yellowstone is laughing out loud at that. There’s no popping in and nothing quick about this national park! It’s huge and as you’ll see in future posts it’s a lot lot of driving.

As soon as we entered the park that night, the animals were there waiting! Great staging job, Lord.

Just like seeing that moose in Glacier, we assumed that it must be so common to see animals like this all the time since it happened within minutes of our entrance to the park…. but no! after a week here, we know that it was just another special gift for us to enjoy. We haven’t seen the elk in the water like this and so close to the road since that first night.

This big guy was right after the elk:

We decided to check out Norris Geyser Basin because it looked close-ish on the map. Seeing our first hydrothermal features was so wild! We were all so intrigued and I have much to share about all of this so stay tuned!

For now…. I hope you enjoy the beauty like we did and that it makes you curious to know more and to know what in the world this all is!!!!

And we ended the night with our first animal jam 🙂 . We started to understand that we had to prepare ourselves for lots of car time and being patient the next few weeks.

So much more to come! Can’t wait to share it all. Thanks for following ❤️.