With fall well under way and, we hoped, a bit of time before the onset of winter, we decided to take a quick trip to Yellowstone. The idea was to do some hiking in the Park, some shopping in Montana and some exploring in Idaho. Some of this actually happened....
We tried a different border crossing this time, east of Cranbrook, entering the USA at Eureka, MT. We found a small State Park that still had some campsites open (unfortunately right beside a busy rail line), not far from Whitefish Ski Resort.
On through Missoula for food and supplies and some new tires and south towards the Lewis & Clark Trail, Sula, the continental divide and a very nice little campground in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.
The next day we continued south on Rte 93 over the Divide, enjoying sunny skies and warm temperatures and the Salmon River through North Fork, ID that Lewis & Clark explored back in about 1805.
Part of our route east towards Yellowstone went through a dry, almost desert-like valley, just north of Craters of the Moon NP. Stark and dry would describe this area. That night we found a nice campground along a placid and scenic river in the Targhee National Forest, about an hour from West Yellowstone.
The next few days were spent hiking around all the hot springs, geysers and mud flats that we could find along the road, down into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and on to Mammoth Hot Springs. It was cool, then cold, as a major storm made itself felt, dumping significant amounts of snow on parts of the Park. We spent a couple of days at Mammoth waiting for the storm to pass, finally escaping to the North and the I-90. Many roads were closed, including all in the Park the day we left.
Our choice of routes was intended to get us away from the snow and finally, by the time we got to Missoula again, we seemed to be past it. Some shopping finished out the long day of travel and we only went a short distance south and west before stopping for the night. Once again, we were on the path of Lewis & Clark, crossing the Divide at Lolo Pass and spending several hours following the winding Lochsa River west before heading north again towards Coeur d'Alene. We spent our last night at Heyburn State Park about 45 minutes south of Coeur d'Alene and the next day enjoyed a warm, sunny day for our drive back home, just in time to see the Federal election results.
Pictures of the road trip can be seen at:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/dave.mcc51/RoadTripYellowstoneMontanaIdaho#
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