Stink.
Never again.
No.  Thank.  You.

Friends – if you know and love me and don’t like the idea of hearing me be negative, you may want to stop reading henceforth.

 

Back at home as I was planning this trip, I’d figured we’d enjoy a drive through Yellowstone on our way to the next hotel in Gillette, WY.  I picked the route going near Old Faithful and allocated a 3 hour window in the park.  I know many people spend DAYS in Yellowstone as a destination in itself, but that was not how we were visiting. 

While at the pool Tuesday evening, we met a man who strongly recommended we take the drive through Yellowstone that included the Lamar Valley.  He had been there the day before and had seen bear, bison, wolves, elk, and more.  It was hard to find a map showing what I wanted online, but we decided we’d stop at an information booth upon arriving at the park. 

We just couldn’t seem to mobilize Wednesday morning.  I think being in two rooms slowed us down a bit.  We were a good 75-90 minutes behind our goal when we finally got moving on the road.   This was partially due to the fact that I stopped at Target for water wings for Johanna for future pools.

We made it to the entrance to Yellowstone around 11.  John went into an information building and talked with a woman who gave him a map and highlighted areas for us.  She said to him multiple times that the Lamar Valley route was just beautiful.  She highly recommended it.   We entered the park as yet undecided if we’d take route A (planned at home) or route B (newly suggested).

We were initially excited as we saw our first bison.   Little did we realize how many we would see.

 

We drove around, looking at scenery – saw some of these:

And lots and lots of this:

 

Now – heading back to our plan.
I’ve come to understand that many of the places within national parks don’t have easy to determine points for GPS to calculate distances.    Having plugged in the address of our hotel, we knew what route A would take in time as it was the shortest distance between the two points.  But newly suggested route B was still hard to determine.  As we came to the cross road of route A and route B in the center of the park at Canyon Village we turned as if heading down route B.  Once GPS stopped giving us instructions to turn around (OH WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO HER!) she finally recalculated and the new route tacked on 40 minutes.  Instead of arriving at our hotel at 6:40 P.M. it would be 7:20 P.M.  Well, 40 minutes isn’t that much in the scheme of things, so we decided we’d go for it. 

 

We turned back to Canyon Village to grab some lunch.  We knew that somewhere on this trip we’d like to try bison, and John figured we’d get our chance here.  He was correct.

 

Our waitress was nice enough, and the sous chef was helpful, but other than that this is two hours of our lives we will Never Get Back.

First off – it had taken forever to get seated.  There were empty tables everywhere and employees standing around talking with each other.  But we waited quite a bit.  Finally seated, four of us ordered bison burgers and four had kids’ meals (Marie wasn’t very hungry).   We waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  People all around us were getting served.  In retrospect, I’m pretty sure they ran out of bison and someone went out in the park to get another one. 

Finally they served me my $15.50 lunch.

Oh – and here’s Hanny’s $7 pizza.

I can’t make this up, friends.

$103, folks.  And people dare to suggest Disney is a rip off.   Disney food is excellent.

 

We FINALLY got out of there, and some needed to go to the bathroom. 
Child A had walked more quickly than I, and then decided to use the family bathroom.
Child B went off to his bathroom.
I went into the ladies room and waited in line thinking child A was in one of the stalls.  Except when I finally got into my stall I recognized that the shoes in the only stall that hadn’t opened as I waited did not, in fact, belong to child A.
I finish up and go out to look for her.  Couldn’t find her.  I headed to the outside door and there she comes back in upset.  She states she’d stood by the bathroom waiting for child B who never came out, then feared we’d left her.  I got her to the van and saw Child B was not there.  First I foolishly went in to look around, but it wasn’t like I could enter the men’s room.  John then went in and came back pronouncing the men’s room was empty.  Where was child B?  John went to look in the bookstore, but my money was on him wandering the parking lot.  About 3 minutes later he breathlessly entered the van. 

Teachable moment, you say?
It was now TWO O’CLOCK.  TWO. 

At this point we expected to begin this Beautiful Journey through Lamar Valley.  We did see some stuff.

As we rounded one curve the road was log-jammed and people were standing along the road staring up at something.  John had me jump out of the car and run up to the crowd as he crept by.  We saw bears.

 

We were absolutely too close.  I scurried through cars to meet back up with John.  He and the kids had seen them from the window.  Ok.  Maybe route B WAS the key.

It was at least 3:30 when we finally left the official park.

 

We saw more bears as we left Yellowstone and entered Beartooth Mountains.

 

As we left the park, we thought “it” was done and the kids and I settled into some entertainment modes to pass by the drive.
We were through Cooke City. 

At this point let me just drop in here that the route we took out of the northeast corner of the park is a road that snakes in and out of Wyoming and Montana.  Back and forth.
We didn’t know this – nor had we ever hear of the Beartooth Mountains before.  And of course I’d never looked up Beartooth Mountains on Wikipedia.
Ignorance is NOT BLISS.

In just a short time John said to me, “Look at all this snow.”
He opened the window to take a photo.   It was 5:51.  GPS was now telling us we’d get there at 10:34 P.M.  😦

 

“Awww – see the snow?’’

We had No Idea what we were entering into.  Zero.

We spent the next TWO hours navigating the worst road of my life.   Switchback after switchback.  Speeds of 20 mph posted.  And heavy rain and fog.  John had white knuckles and I had chest pain.  I have videos, but need to upload to YouTube first before I can share them and I am typing off-line as we drive.  It was some of the most stressful traveling I’ve ever experienced, tied ONLY with being in a jeep in southern Kenya with just John and our driver and having men with machetes and clubs circle our vehicle demanding information from the previous town. 

I hate mountains.

I am tired of traveling.  I do not feel clever with my words and I can not do justice to the misery and concern we felt as well maneuvered our family through this highway nightmare.  We never would have knowingly took this risk.  Never.  I couldn’t take adequate pictures of the drop offs because I couldn’t even look out the window much of the time.

 

Finally, praise the LORD, FINALLY we got out of that mess and stopped to get gas.  The GPS route had us going northeast to Billings, MT before heading back southeast to Gillette.  My AAA map showed more direct options.  John took the map into a service station and asked the cashier who stated each route would likely deliver us to Gillette at the same time, but that the Billings route north first would be more highway and likely more comfortable.  Cashier and GPS agreed so who were we to argue.

We found a small town with a Walmart.  I bought junk food (Goldfish and some SaraLee snack cakes) and pop to celebrate our survival.  We still had HOURS to our destination, which GPS now put at 11:51 P.M.

We had had no cell service all day.  Around 10:00 P.M. John’s phone had service and I placed a patchy call to the Arbuckle Lodge in Gillette, WY.  They were plenty nice about it and turns out it is a Christian operation.  This room had a king bed, one bath, and then had a second room off the king room with two pyramid bunks.  We didn’t wait for a pack-n-play to be delivered.  We piled into beds as I vowed to never intentionally visit the Rocky Mountains again.  I clung to the knowledge that God’s mercies are new each morning and we could start over again the next day.  If today was THIS bad, it can only go up.

Right?

RIGHT?