A Yellowstone Sojourn
Written July 6, 2003
The KOA part:
We arrived at our summer workamping destination with three days to spare and got set up for living and calling this place our first fulltiming home. The park is fairly large at over 30 acres and 300 spaces with lots of kamping kabins (sic) that tourists to this area seem to really love. They must feel it gives them a “true West” experience or something.
Actually, we’re surrounded by large ranches, some of them for “dudes” and renting horses, and towering mountains, so the scenery is endlessly captivating. We’re six miles from the small town of West Yellowstone, which is filled with tourist havens and not much else. For instance, if it’s not Cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese, don’t bother looking for it because you aren’t going to find it! Roma or cherry or grape tomatoes? Nope, be happy with the plain ol’ garden variety.
Some of you may recall that we really stocked up on the basics before coming here and I’m happy we did. Rachael’s old bed is entirely loaded with piles of groceries. With the weight we can carry in our rig, price gouging isn’t something we have to accept, as we stock up at Grocery Outlets and Costco. Our new freezer is working wonderfully to help accommodate that too.
Marc has been busy doing the groundwork for construction of six new kamping cabins. They come in kit form and arrive next week, so he expects to be framing them soon. The owner would like to have them completed in a month, but Marc says six weeks realistically.
I’ve been doing a combination of kabin cleaning and working in the convenience store and fudge shop. We make the fudge here and it comes in all varieties. I don’t even like fudge and I find myself taking samples all day. This has got to stop! I’m being shown the ropes by a wonderful lady named Phyllis who has been workamping for a couple years now. She and her husband Fred are from Florida, where they return to take the winters off. In fact, many of the workampers here are from Florida. In addition, there are quite a few college students, many also from the East. The college students are the ones who work a full shift on their feet and still have the energy to drive all the way to Jackson Hole, WY to go to a movie after work and then get back here about 2 a.m. and wake up and do it again!
The Yellowstone part:
Our first trip in to the park was on our motorcycles, which proved to be a wonderful way to do it. We didn’t get too far—the Fountain Paint Pots, before turning back due to the crowds and thinking we have three months to enjoy this experience. Unfortunately, we tried some back road riding on another day and I screwed up my leg pretty badly when my bike fell over on it, so I haven’t been able to ride since. On July 5th, a day off, we took another foray in to the park, but this time in the Freightliner, driving the lower loop.
Having seen Old Faithful’s eruptions several times on previous trips, we caught this one with almost no wait, although it wasn’t one of the more spectacular ones. Traveling on, the day was so gorgeous, we had a picnic lunch right on Yellowstone Lake’s shore. At 136 square miles, the afternoon wind frequently turns it to dangerous chop, hence, there are very few boats to be seen. While there, we admired and struck up a conversation with a traveler from Florida who is doing cross country on his Gold Wing. And yeah, that has us thinking: if I keep falling down so much on my dirt bike it might be prudent to think about getting rid of the dirt bikes and getting a road cruiser instead. Hmmm, now how could we manage to carry that along?
After lunch, we enjoyed a stop in Lake Village to see the venerable old Lake Lodge, Yellowstone’s oldest operating hotel, opened in 1891. Marc insisted we put our feet up on the veranda’s railing to enjoy the magnificent lake view and imagine ourselves as the pioneer first visitors who had to arrive by horses and wagons after a long train trip. Just down the road from this well preserved antique is an abomination they call the Lake Hotel, painted canary yellow and looking like a misplaced penitentiary. Please don’t bother staying there!
Bum leg and all, I managed to enjoy the views of the Mud Volcano walkway which traverses nearly a mile of up and down topography. It put us in close proximity to this buffalo which had us more than a little nervous. Every year, there are gorings by those stupid enough to get too close to these unpredictable animals. This section of the park hugs the mighty Yellowstone River, which is not fishable right now due to spawning season. The Yellowstone River continues its meander through the Hayden Valley, one of the park’s prettiest. The road in this section is very narrow and slow but that’s ok since there is lots of wildlife to see.
More to come…
