Day 7 - August 11, 2014

Happy Birthday Dad!  Hope you had a great day.  We left Cody this morning around 8. On our way to Yellowstone!  The drive was really beautiful.  We were in a deep canyon most of the way following Shoshone River.  It made us both feel a little dizzy with the steep cliffs on both sides and the up and down driving.  Everything feels out of perspective.  Hard to explain.  We are starting to feel a little more comfortable with mountain driving. On a really bright note, I tried the broken window again and it started working!  Must of been a bad connection.  That was an easy fix. Yellowstone was beautiful but crazy busy.  We spent time in a least 2 traffic snarls, our first of the trip.  One other travel note while in Yellowstone, if you start to smell weird smells don't right away suspect your vehicle's septic system!  We tried to find a campground, but everything was full.  We did about a 3 mile walk around Old Faithful which covered about 150 thermal holes and geysers.  It was very hot there.  We saw Old Faithful erupt at 3 p.m. which was really cool.  Then we had coffee in the van waiting for the mass exodus to clear somewhat and then we carried on out of the park by the Western Exit at Madison.  We hoped to find a campsite outside of the park but that was not successful either and it was so hot, over 90.  Any campgrounds we saw had no shade, no grass and sketchy looking outbuildings. We also have no air-conditioning once we stop driving. That made it easy to decide to spend a night in our first motel room in Idaho Falls.  I must say though, that I prefer sleeping in the van and I worried about our little home out in the parking lot unoccupied.