This morning was our last morning in Yellowstone. We knew that we had a long drive today, so we set the alarm for 5:00am. Loading the car in the dark would normally not be my favorite thing, but this morning we were treated to an incredible lightening storm that lasted about 20 minutes. It was just north of the park, so a safe distance away, but it felt like it was close enough to reach out and touch.
We made one last stop on our way out. We had to stop at the most photographed place in the park, the Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We visited the north side of the falls the other day, but hadn’t seen it from this view.
We were making good time on our way out, until we got stuck in the usual traffic jam.
Thank goodness he was on the other side of the road. And thank goodness my husband read all the signs about not getting too close.
We stopped in Cody, Wyoming to eat and fill up our gas tank. We weren’t sure what to expect much past Cody and didn’t want to get stranded somewhere.
Ok, I have to tell you a story, but you have to promise not to tell Scott that I told you. He made me swear!
So we stop in Cody and get a bite to eat at a little hometown diner. Right next door, in the same parking lot, is a gas station. After breakfast, I pull the car around and Scott proceeds to start pumping the gas. He made some comment about me washing the windows (which I hate to do) so I pretended to be busy on the phone (I was actually checking Facebook). He starts washing the windows, you know how a guy does when he is pretending to be you complaining about having to do anything. The gas shuts off and he’s like “great why did the gas shut off!”. I said something to the effect that it was probably because we only needed a quarter tank to be full. He continues with what he is doing, mocking me the whole time because I am sitting in the car, not helping. He finishes what he doing, comes around to the passenger side, gets in, puts his seatbelt on, reviews the map, and we are prepared to go. I pull a short ways out when suddenly I hear this noise out of my window. I can’t even describe what the noise sounded like. I look in my side view mirror just in time to see the nozzle and hose of the gas pump go flying from the side of my car, snap back towards the actual pump, bounce off that and land in the bushes.
Oh my gosh, you should have seen the look on his face; not to mention the face of the station owner, the faces of everyone else at the gas station, and oh, did I mention all the people in the restaurant who had also witnessed this event! In all his emphasizing on how much he has to do while I sit in the car, he forgot pretty much one of the most important steps. He never took the nozzle out of the car! Luckily everyone and everything was fine and we proceeded on our way. I barely made it out of the parking lot before I started laughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. Oh, I just had to share that with you guys.
We crossed over the entire state of Wyoming and pulled off at Devil’s Tower.
Devil’s Tower is pretty amazing. It’s about 1,500 feet tall and is constantly being climbed by professional climbers. It’s intense to watch these climbers. I was also impressed to find out that the climbers on the rescue team have to be able to scale to the top in under one hour!
At the base of the tower is a meadow called Prairie Dog City. It looks like a basic meadow until you stand real still and realize that the whole meadow is moving. There are thousands of prairie dogs that live underground and wander around the meadow searching for food. One cute note about prairie dogs, when they approach each other, they actually kiss to identify if they are part of the same batch. I saw this a couple of times, but wasn’t able to catch a photo of it.
We ended the day in Cabin #1 at the Holy Smoke Resort in Keystone, South Dakota. It’s going to be a long three days if Scott keeps saying “Holy Smoke” about everything! It wasn’t funny the first time.
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