Yellowstone / Wyoming

Wildfire smoke filled that ravine the night before leaving Utah

These last 2 weeks brought fast paced moving, along with another new tire and a shattered windshield from a rock on the highway.

For some reason I thought an RV would be less maintenance than owning a home, but now that we're 10 months into the trip it seems like a new issue pops up every week with little time to fix it. Did I mention the wind has destroyed our awning? Every travel day I ask myself "why are we doing this?".  It's expensive, it's exhausting, and sometimes it downright sucks..  This trip is either the dumbest thing I've ever done or the most interesting.

Dead forest of Yellowstone.

Our travels took us to Yellowstone National Park, a place I figured would be way over-hyped so came into it with limited expectations. Good thing I did, because turns out it IS way over-hyped, and way over crowded which I also expected. After driving through so much of this country and seeing so many beautiful places, most of which don't charge you to drive through, I saw very little to be impressed by in Yellowstone. People crowding around to take pictures of elk and Canadian geese, tons of traffic, and miles and miles of dead forest.

A descent through the east entrance Yellowstone at 8% grade for 5 miles confirmed my desire to never go back. I can't imagine a semi or even a Class A taking that grade, and this route didn't have any of the usual "brake check" areas, truck warnings, or safety turnouts that we are used to seeing on less steep roads.. Just our rig careening down the mountain with nothing but a thin metal railing between us and the cliff.

We got to see a small rodeo while in West Yellowstone, which was followed by a cowboy cookout. 

While camped outside of Yellowstone we experienced temperatures down into the 30s at night, and even a hail storm one morning! The neighbors informed us that it starts snowing in this area in September.

Next stop was Cody, Wy, the town Buffalo Bill founded.  It is home to the Buffalo Bill Smithsonian, which was a great museum with a natural history and Native American wing as well. 

Next week we will be headed back to Colorado to re-attempt a visit, this time through the north side of the state!

-Hana 

This week we co-designed and ordered up some shirts inspired by
James' new guitar box venture. Mom, Dad, we sent them to
you so keep an eye out ;)