Sunday, August 19th, 2007
We woke up in our bed and “no breakfast” lodging…hungry and hit the road for Yellowstone Park. (For the record, Katie repeatedly called Yellowstone “Yosemite” which confused everyone.) Our first (and hopefully last) altercation with the law occurred shortly after our departure. Dermot failed to notice that the speed limit went from 75 to 55 to 45 to 35 to 25. He thought he was still in a 35 mph zone going through a small town and was traveling at the break neck speed of 35 mph in a 25 mph zone. The Ford F-150 police “cruiser” pulled us over just as we hit the city limits. The officer reminded Dermot that he needs to be careful going through cities in Montana, because the speed limits change quickly. The police officer looked like he was 18 years old and being a nice young lad, he decided to spare us from getting our first ticket. He did refuse to let us take a picture with him to document the experience. Upon our request, he kindly replied, “I don’t do pictures”…but Katie snuck one in anyways...
So the moral of the story in Montana is that it’s okay to go 101 mph on the highway, but don’t drive 35 mph through town.
We pulled in to Yellowstone around 10 a.m., and we hit our very first major traffic jam of the trip. The obvious reason for the traffic jam was bison. The bison had decided they want to cross the ugly black surface that us humans decided to put smack dab in the middle of their home. After some pictures and admiration of these beasts that make a very interesting noise, we carried on toward Steamboat Glacier to see a sulfur pool and geyser. The sulfur pool smelled as bad as anything rich in sulfur should, but covered up Dermot’s gas rather well. As we carried on towards Mammoth Springs, we ran into another traffic jam. This one was caused by a bear cub playing next to the road. We jumped out of car for some pictures, and luckily Momma bear never showed up.
The rest of the day consisted of a lot of driving and some interesting billboards. The most interesting was probably one that showed a young child holding a gun up in front of him and read, “If he doesn’t love God, how will he ever love you?”.
Our fuel stop was in Manhattan, MT. Not quite as many skyscrapers as we expected, but we figured Manhattan would still be worth a stop. At around 7 p.m. we finally arrived in Missoula, MT which was on fire. (literally) It seems that this year was the year of forest fires for Western MT and there was smoke everywhere. Luckily the fires were slowly being contained, but the smoke remained. We had dinner with the soon-to-be Mr and Mrs Keller: Nate, Jeannie, as well as Erin Sink, Jeannie’s mom and step dad.
Then out to Missoula for a taste of the local night life….and to meet up with Jamie and Taylor in town for the summer. We tried the old post, but ended up at Dinosaur cafe, which has pictures of hobos who have passed through the area over the years. Katie and I were going to have ours put up, but I don’t think we qualify as official hobos yet. After some Moose Drool and shots of whiskey we called it a night.