Yellowstone and Idaho- Saturday, July 8, 2017

      Once again, Julie gets to have her birthday in an exotic spot.  This time, of course, we woke up in a cabin in Yellowstone National Park.  We're sleeping tonight in Pocatello, Idaho-- not quite known as a romantic spot, but here we are.

      We went for a sit-down breakfast at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, which was the lodge that went with the cabins where we stayed last night.  After that, we went to the nearby Old Faithful Visitors Center, which seems to be the main visitor's center for the park.  As we arrived, a film was starting that they time to begin before Old Faithful's eruption.  It was basically an introduction to the park, and went over a lot of things that we have already become familiar with.  When the film ended, the group was invited outside to wait for Old Faithful herself.  Once again, we helped prove that a watched pot never boils, and the geyser was almost twenty minutes late again.  Scott went out to watch it outside, while Julie and the girls looked around the visitor's center and ultimately watched the eruption from inside, sitting down and watching through its big windows.  After that, Scott was ready to look around the visitor's center exhibits, but the girls were ready to get on the road.

     While waiting for Old Faithful, Julie had talked with a ranger named Roger who gave her tips to see some animals we hadn't found yet.  In particular, he said that elk could usually be seen around Mammoth Hot Springs, which is where we were headed.  Scott had suggested that we go towards Mammoth Hot Springs anyway, because this site is one of the major ones that we haven't seen here yet.  He knew we'd go quite a ways past the West Entrance of Yellowstone, but from what he'd seen on the maps, he figured we could go out the Northwest Entrance almost as easily and get to see some sights along the way.

     We got out to look around at an overlook for the Norris Geyser Basin, and saw many clouds of steam rising from the area.  There was a long stretch of the Loop Road that was down to a single lane and it took us a while to get past it.  When we got to Mammoth Hot Springs, the parking lot looked full, and Julie saw that there seemed to be a lot of steps along the wooded boardwalk around it, so we drove past.  We did get to see a little bit of its famous calcium formations, with hills of white and yellow stalactites as we drove past.  Even more excitingly, we saw our biggest animal sighting of the day as we were driving through the Mammoth Lodge area.  There, amongst the cars, buildings and people were a few elk does.  It seems that the wolves that were reintroduced to Yellowstone in the 1990s have been devastating the elk population.  The elks have apparently learned that the wolves don't like people, so they are often to be seen where people are. We went out the North Entrance of Yellowstone a row of shops and restaurants in Gardiner, Montana.  We had a lunch at a place called Yellowstone pizza.  The girls were thrilled to be back where there was cell phone service.  

     However, Scott also made use of the cell service to check the maps for where to go next.  It was then that he realized his mistake.  We couldn't get to Idaho from the North Entrance except to turn around and back track through the park.  That meant at least an extra hour in the car and a total of around two hours that we never should have driven if we'd had gone out the west gate as we had originally planned.  This was supposed to be a relatively short driving day, and he the realization stunned him. He knows what kind of a toll that the car rides are taking and felt so bad he wanted to cry when he realized what he had done.  But there was no getting there any other way.  We had to go back through the park, through the one lane construction area again, and back out the West Entrance.   This leg of the trip was a very quiet one.  

     We did see even more elk as we passed through the Mammoth Lodge area, including quite a few doe and at least one buck that was just dozing in the shade of a tree as the cars drove around him.  We went back through the construction, and eventually went out the West Entrance to West Yellowstone, Montana.  We missed taking a picture at the Idaho border.   Scott was surprised at how flat this area of Idaho is, but Julie pointed out that it's what makes it potato growing country.  We did see a lot of potato fields, usually with the big irrigation systems that look like Tinker-toy arms stretching out across the fields.  The temperature was hot again and went up to 100 degrees at one point, so many of the fields were being irrigated as we passed.

     We finally made it to Pocatello, Idaho.  There's nothing we're planning on seeing here but our hotel reservations were here.  We chose this spot originally because it would put some distance between us and Yellowstone and was supposed to make the drive tomorrow to Oregon a little bit shorter.  When we pulled into our hotel,  Emma said it looked like a bank, and we agreed.   We got directions for going to a nearby mall and its movie theaters.  Julie chose a place called the Black Bear Diner for dinner.  They had good food, but served portions that were too large for all of us.  Anna let the waiter know that it was Julie's birthday.  The staff sang to her and gave her a complimentary dish of huckleberry ice cream.  We've seen a lot of huckleberry in the restaurants and gift shops in this area.  After dinner, we went to the movies.   Anna and Emma went to Despicable Me 3, and Scott and Julie went to Spider-man: Homecoming.