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Head waters
Yep folks, this is where it starts. Three rivers join here to form the longest river in the US, the Missouri River Day 11 Glacier National Park to Yellowstone National Park, WY
Time to say good-bye to Glacier and head south to Yellowstone. We both feel like we have so much more to do and see here.....and we are still whipped from our hike yesterday!
We packed up the tent and headed down the road.
When we were planning this trip we decided that our route wood be flexable. Today is an example of that. While we didn't find the elusive World's Largest Spool of Dental Floss, we did have the opportunity to visit the headwaters of the
Missouri River. Jill, once walked across the Mississippi river at its humble begining and we hoped to do the same with the Missouri. Unfortunately, if the word "confluence" is connected with a river's beginning, chances of walking across it are slim. Unlike the Ohio River which is the result of joining two rivers, it takes three rivers to make the Missouri River. Simply put, Jill did not attempt to walk across.
We were still on the bubble about stopping in Billings to see friends and relatives of Jill’s but Mother Nature made our decision for us. As we neared Bozeman we saw
Surrounded by storms
The plains are noted for their thunderstorms and we got ts see a few of them. We were able to avoid this one. Good thing too - it dropped baseball-sized hail. Yikes! a doozy of a storm coming after us. We turned south and the storm thankfully kept chugging to the East. We found out a few days later that the storm hit Bozeman with baseball sized hail (No kidding! We have newspaper headlines to prove it). We entered the northern gate of Yellowstone. The gate is made of stone dates back to 1903 and is called the
Roosevelt Arch because President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone.
We had to try not to stop and sight see as we drove into the park, but it was hard! Our Camp site was down by the Lake area (south on the loop) and we didn’t want to set up in the dark. Thank goodness Don called in the morning to reserve a site; by the time we got to the main gate, we noted that all of the camp sites were full for the night.
We checked in and found a very personable and fun park ranger who lived in an RV across the road from our camp site. She and her husband both worked at Yellowstone, but were from MA. We quickly set up our tent under the pines . . .
Old west
Some of the small towns we passed through proudly displayed their Old West heritage swatting mosquitos as we did.
We had just enough time to grab a bite in the park and then back to change clothes and walk up to the ranger talk on bears . . . at least that was the plan! We had a nice dinner at the park cafe which included a couple of locally brewed beers and sandwiches. As we pulled back into the camping area, we realized we had a new camper in the area...a huge Bison! He was just eating and passing through.
We decided to change (into long pants to ward off the mosquitos and maybe grab a 15 minute nap. Unfortunately thunder and lightening started roaring and the rain pelted the tent. No leaks . . . thats always a plus! But, no ranger program either, so we made it an early night and caught up on some of our reading.
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