You’ll have to excuse the next chapter of our trip- our trip was huge and I felt the best way to present it was to do 1 state for each blog post. However Idaho, Wyoming and Montana are just too intertwined and difficult to seperate, so this next chapter is a bumper edition. My best bet is for you to grab a cup of tea and a biscuit, or a beer, sit back and relax as you read on to the next part of our Wild West Road trip.
As we made our way from Salt Lake City, Utah to Jackson, Wyoming, the weather took a turn for the worse. It became cooler and the skies threatened rain. We crossed into Idaho, a land of big skies and prairies and as soon as we could we turned off the main motorway onto smaller* more local roads. I say smaller but even the tiny roads in USA are bigger than most of the UK roads!
We soon passed through Lava Hot Springs in Idaho – a small town named after its very historic and famous natural springs. I knew we were passing them, and knew about them, but thought it would be too hot to enjoy them, so hadn’t really anticipated stopping. However as the weather was much cooler we decided that we would in fact indulge in a dip!
We had to improvise as although we had our swimwear to hand, we had no towels so we took our fleece jumpers in to act as a towel lol, paid out £12 each and got changed. The hot springs were discovered by Native American Indians over a thousand years ago – there are several pools at various natural temperatures, the hottest being 44 degrees c. They were absolutely devine! The water was mineral rich and you could feel the effects on your bones immediately. Oh just heaven! We really really enjoyed our time there! The town of Lava hot springs has built up around the springs and caters to tourist for not only the springs but the river too. There were some nice little shops that we enjoyed looking in before hotting the road again. Our bodies felt insanely relaxed! I wish there was such a place near to us in England, we’d be there all the time!
Our next stop was Jackson, Wyoming, but not before a really fun road trip on the back roads through Idaho. We passed miles of cattle ranches then stopped by a roadside Jerky stall, had a ton of samples from the guy who makes it, before picking up some for munchies later, then we stopped at a tiny historical store which is still a store, but also a living history museum. The owner was fab and proudly showed us all her artefacts including the oldest barbers chair in Idaho, a 100 year old saddle, and a very historic post office counter complete with historic mail. It was such a cool afternoon travelling – we’ve said it once, we’ll say it again, we blooming LOVE travelling through small town America!
Our arrival at Jackson, and we had booked the historic Antler Inn for its great location. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t brilliant but we had a fun evening trying out some of the local bars, including the Cowbar Bar which was pretty cool, but horrendously overpriced, and two local breweries. The second one, the Snake River brewery was particularly good and we enjoyed a very tasty dinner here – the bison chilli was exceptional as was Keith’s Bison burger.
If we thought the weather was bad on our arrival evening, we should have seen it the following morning. I’d got my heart set on an early alarm so we could try and catch sunrise in the Grand Teton National Park. Alarm set, straight up and showered, opened the door and It soon became evident that that was clearly wishful thinking – we’d woken up to low cloud, which briefly lifted when we stopped at the entrance gate then slammed back down in a real peal souper. It was (almost) funny. We were driving through the scenic drive, with Butch from Guidealong app telling us about each scenic overlook and how the views were stupendous, yet we could barely see 2 foot in front of the car bonnet. We tried to remain positive, surely it would lift. A bout an hour in to our pea souper drive, we decided to give up on the scenic tour for now and concentrate on seeing if we could find some wildlife instead.
We headed to an area of the park well known for animal sightings and got excited when we saw other cars milling around the area too. The cloud had lifted a little but we still couldn’t see the mountains. People were watching an otter and a beaver (I missed both!) and also people felt there was a grizzly bear was around. After a bit of too ing and fro ing – we soon rediscovered our absolute LOVE for wildlife spotting and remembered how utterly addictive it is! Plus we hit jackpot. We, and several other cars enjoyed watching a grizzly mum and cub, about 100 yards away. We watched for ages! It was utterly compelling.
We were amongst the first there so had a brilliant spot and we found ourselves in the middle of a full scale bear jam as others got wind of the sighting- to be fair, many people were literally sat and stood ON TOP of their vehicles to get the best views, so for passers by it was quite obvious something was occurring! It was utterly wonderful to watch this mother and cub grazing the wildflower meadows so close to us, and although we had bear spray on us, we were pleased not to need it!
After the excitement of our grizzly bear sighting, we were happy to realise that the low cloud had lifted somewhat so we hit the road around the scenic drive around the National Park. The mountain range is spectacular but also rather unique as it has no foothills. We saw 2 glaciers and some lovely glacial lakes.
In the afternoon the cloud cleared fully and we were treated to the glorious blue sky backdrop. It was truly stunning!
Our 2nd evening in Jackson was super fun, despite the cowboy shootout being cancelled due to a storm on its way (it never arrived actually!)
We had a beer at the Roadhouse brewery, then another in the historic Drug store (I had the local vodka!) Then we had a pizza in the old movie theatre which is now a pizza joint. Those who know Keith well will appreciate how excited he was about this! We stopped off at the historical playhouse, which is over 100 years old, completely original and was showing Annie get your gun complete with honky tonk pianist. The steward let us poke our heads inside mid show which was a treat.
It was time to move on from Grand Tetons National Park tomorrow, but we decided to do another bit of the park before we moved on, and as such had another early start. The Moose Wilson road also is well known for wildlife sightings and we were cruising down there at 7am. Our eyes were on stalks as we crawled along the road (luckily no-one else was about!) until a ranger stoped us in the middle of the single track road. “There’s a black bear on the grass verge over there, wind your windows up, go very slowly and grab your cameras” he told us. Sure enough there was a great big bear less than 4 foot from us in the car. The footage isn’t great as he was having his breakfast in the bushes but we saw his nose from time to time. What an experience!
We continued through the park once more, enjoying the views some more before making the short 1 hour journey on to Yellowstone National Park. This has been a bucket list item for me for years and we were both super excited to drive through that gate. We hadn’t known that Yellowstone was America’s first National Park because of its hydrothermal wonders. The park contains more than 10,000 thermal features, including the world’s greatest concentration of geysers as well as hot springs, mudpots, and steam vents.
Unlike Grand Tetons, Arches and Canyonlands to some extent, Yellowstone is HUGE. Properly big and you can only get to roughly 70% of it. I found planning an itinerary for Yellowstone daunting because of its size – i literally spent HOURS on it. But actually, when you break it down, it’s a figure of 8. Two scenic loops, the north loop and the bottom. We drove in through the south entrance and turned left toward Old Faithful and then West Yellowstone village (which although the park is mainly in Wyoming, West Yellowstone is in Montana.) West Yellowstone made for a good base for a couple of nights. On our way through to West Yellowstone, we stopped for a few hours at the Old Faithful area.
Old Faithful is named so because it is one of the only geysers whose eruptions can be predicted. The cone geyser shoots its eruption up between 100-180 feet every hour to 90 mins or so (the NPS do calculations based on the previous eruption to estimate the time of the next, and then put a sign on the visitor centre with the next predicted time on) . We were lucky enough to catch two eruptions which were really cool to watch. We also enjoyed the trail around some of the other geysers, plus a beer in the historic Old faithful inn – over 100 years old.
From here we made our way to the motel to check in for two nights, before spending a relaxed evening in West Yellowstone village.
The next day arrived and we swapped our wheels! We’d booked a tour of the lower loop with Yellowstone Vacations, we’d done a lot of driving up to now so it was nice to hand the keys over to someone else.
Gyspy, our guide, was terrific and clearly extremely passionate about Yellowstone National Park. We enjoyed our tour with him, including meeting some of the other passengers too. We had another visit to Old Faithful where we witnessed another impressive eruption, toured around Yellowstone Lake, and visited the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone which was gorgeous.
A highlight of the south loop for us was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone – and we were pleased to have Gypsy who encouraged us not to look until he took us to the best view point. The views were terrific.
On our way back to base the bus couldn’t believe their luck when we had one of the most incredible beer sightings of our life! A cinnamon black bear was right beside the road and we were treated to a wonderful encounter!
After two nights in West Yellowstone, we moved on to the North West corner of the park. We loaded the car with our gear and set off on a scenic drive through the left hand side of the upper loop, on our own this time, although we did pass the Yellowstone Vactions bus at one point.
We visited the mud pots which were interesting to see (albeit a but whiffy) and spent quite a bit of time at Mammoth Hot Springs. The Hot springs that rise up through limestone, dissolve the calcium carbonate, and deposit the calcite makes travertine terraces and they were impressive to admire.
We continued through the park and out to the Roosevelt Arch for a picture, then back into the park the way we’d came, carrying on to Tower and Lamar Valley and then out of the park to Cooke City in Montana. We spent some time admiring at distance a grizzly bear along with many others in Lamar Valley.
Cooke City is tiny – it sits at the bottom end of the Beartooth Highway, which sadly we didn’t have enough time to travel on this time. There is a historic general store in Cooke City, two gas stations, a pub and two cafe/restaurants. We enjoyed a couple of drinks in the pub before an early night as we’d got a very early start planned.
One of the reasons for us staying in Cooke City was its proximity to Lamar Valley which is famous for its wildlife viewing opportunities. We set our alarms for 4am, left the hotel at 5am and took a very slow drive to Lamar Valley in time for sunrise. Within 1 mile of our hotel we passed a black bear on the side of the road. It was quite an experience driving into the park in the pitch black. We’d heard to look out for wolf spotters, which we did and we spent quite some time whilst the sun rose waiting to see the wolves. We moved on to Slough Creek and got lucky. There were crowds of people watching and while we did see the wolves in the far distance, they were too far for pictures. We hung around Lamar valley most of the morning. Wildlife spotting was addicted and we learnt the FOMO phrase (Fear of Missing out!). Every time we got in the car to leave, we’d see someone else stopped with a spotting scope and we just couldn’t drive by!
We did see a Coyote which was cool and several deer. and of course the wolves in the distance.
Just before lunch, we dragged ourselves off, retracing our steps back to Tower and then towards to the fishing village, and out of the park towards Cody, Wy. But his point we had covered every road possible of Yellowstone around the upper and lower loops. We’d loved it.
I haven’t talked much about the wildlife in the park- which is a shame because it was a highlight- in both Great Tetons and Yellowstone . So below are a collection of our fave animal pics snapped here in Yellowstone.
From Yellowstone we made our way to Cody. Cody is a historic small town, made famous by cowboy Bill Cody. We visited the old frontier town which was really interesting, looking at the old cabins and artefacts.
There was a Walmart here so we stocked up on breakfast supplies and then made our way to the hotel- the famous Irma hotel. We’d decided to splash out on this and I’m glad we did. Although the hotel was little tired in places, it used to be Bill Codyy’s place. In the restaurant there is a beautiful cherry wood bar which Queen Victoria gifted to the Irma in the late 1800s. We were looking forward to having a drink on this but sadly the hotel weren’t serving at it for some strange reason. The main bar was atmospheric though and we soon got talking to some locals who were really interesting – one was a real life cowboy too!
We watched the cowboy shootout which was amusing, before making our way for dinner at a place the cowboy recommended, Cody Steakhouse where we had one of the best burgers ever before taking the Rodeo bus to the Rodeo, a new experience for us! The Rodeo was wacky! I had no idea what to expect and when the first rider came out clinging to the horse and then thrown off I genuinely thought he was dead (thankfully he wasn’t)! It was certainly a fun evening and something that we don’t get to witness here at home.
The next day we made our way to Little Bighorn Battlefield – it was a couple of hours drive there. Here we spent a few hours exploring the area of the Little Bighorn Battle – a battle in which Native American’s bravely stood up for their land. We saw Gen Custer’s last stand hill and using the audio tour and the boards dotted around the area were able to immerse ourselves into the history. I’m not going to lie- battlefields are more K’s thing than mine – but I did enjoy this one. Keith raved so hard about it he said it was the best one he’d ever been too. Big words as we’ve done a few over the years.
From here we continued through Wyoming – which is huge, to Sheridan, a place to break our journey up. British Tourists clearly don’t come to Sheridan too often as we were like minor celebrtrites as we wandered from brewery to brewery. The locals were very friendly and very keen to chat to us. Tow very interesting facts about Sheridan WY are that a) there are 4 breweries tap rooms here. So that in in itself is clearly a good reason to visit. Secondly they love the Royal Family here and actually one of our late Queen’s aides lives in Sheridan, so they are used to receiving the Royal Family here. We liked the vibe here and felt pleased to be back in local small town America slightly off the beaten track.
The next day and our final day in Wyoming was here. Before we crossed the state line into South Dakota, we had one more stop in Wyoming. Devil’s Tower. We didn’t realise that actually Devil’s Tower was America’s first National Monument. The reason we knew Devil’s Tower was because of the film Close Eenouteres of the Third Kind. We have both wanted to visit this site for a very long time. It was SUPERB to be there, it was better than we could have imagined. It’s such a unique landmark- it was originally the inside of a volcano. Nowadays you can climb it with a permit, or do as we did and walk the perimeter of it on an enjoyable path of around 1.5 miles in length.
Of course we couldn’t leave without a little nod to the film. See Video! You need your sound on
After 10 days in Wyoming and Montana it was time to wave goodbye and cross into a new state, South Dakota. Wyoming is such a vast state and home to the very first National Park ( Yellowstone) the First National momument (Devil’s Tower). The people are fabulous and highly patriotic here. The roads are wonderful to drive on and go on for miles and miles without seeing a single building. It really is a tremendous place!
Stay tuned for our South Dakota adventure as we begin to make our way back south to Denver.
Until next time.
Lx
