Yellowstone: South Entrance and West Thumb

You've already seen a picture of the John Moulton Barn on my last post, but I found the following picture, shot by Doug, on the camcorder when I downloaded the video from our trip. I thought it was even nicer than the one I posted and wanted to include it here.

As we left the Tetons on September 19th, we drove into Yellowstone National Park by way of the south entrance, then continued up the eastern side of the lower loop, around the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. (The road through Yellowstone is sort of a figure 8 and the sections are commonly referred to as the lower loop and the upper loop.)

 

 This map can help you see that figure 8, as well as the entrance roads into the park.

 

Lewis Falls

Yellowstone Lake. That's a steam vent in the foreground. They're everywhere in this park.

Another view of Yellowstone Lake, without the steam vent.

There had been a heavy snow in Yellowstone the day before, and the mountain peaks were putting on a show.

Another look at the mountains from Lake Village.

It was about 5:30 PM when we reached Lake Village, and I suddenly realized that we were supposed to call the motel in West Yellowstone by 6 PM if we weren't going to be arriving by that time. Yikes! I had no cell phone service in the park, and I couldn't get the pay phones at Lake Village to let me call out of state. (Yellowstone is in Wyoming, but West Yellowstone is in Montana.) So, instead of eating at the Lake Village Cafeteria as we had planned, we had to make haste to get to the motel.

 

All was well. We arrived at 7 PM, and our room was waiting for us. Whew!