Yellowstone

DAY FORTY-FIVE: Today we drove from Billings, MT to New Salem, ND, which is where we are tonight.

Continuing my narrative of our trip last weekend, we left Boise Friday morning, a bit on the late side, and headed for Yellowstone N.P., via Mountain Home, Arco, Idaho Falls, Victor, Wilson in Idaho, then up through Grand Teton N.P. via the "inner road." On the way, we stopped at Centennial Marsh, a place Christian told us of, which is a bird sanctuary, fairly remote and probably little visited. We were certainly the only humans there, but we saw four sand hill cranes, and several other waterfowls.

An old sign!

On the way through Grand Teton N.P., the sky put on quite a show, as some stormy weather was brewing:

Storm over the Tetons

With sunset, the whole sky was on fire:

Quite a show!

We also saw a moose:

Moose in G.T.N.P.

Our first night was at Grant Village Lodge. Since it was pretty late, we were glad it was the first stop in Yellowstone, located right on Yellowstone Lake.

The next morning, after the breakfast buffet in the Grant Village Restaurant, 

Lake view breakfast

we decided to make a 6-mile r.t hike on the DeLacy Creek Trail to Shoshone Lake, which our "Hikes in Yellowstone N.P." book says is the largest lake in the lower 48 states which cannot reached by road. That's sort of amazing when you think about it -  if nothing else, it says there must be an awful  lot of lakes in this country with roads going to them. This was a beautiful hike. It wasn't particularly difficult, but I had not hiked 6 miles in one stretch for a while. But I did it. Here are some scenes:

DeLacy Creek

Lily pond near the lake

Shoshone Lake

We saw some beautiful wildflowers on this hike, including a variety columbine we hadn't seen before, and the familiar Indian Paint Brush

columbine

Paintbrush

From the Delacy Creek trailhead we drove to Old Faithful, where we would spend the night at the Old Faithful Inn - in my estimation, one of the architectural wonders of the world, and a place where I have long wanted to spend a night. I felt we were lucky to find one of the less expensive rooms available with only 24 hours advanced notice. That will be covered in my next post.