Stop Four On The Yellowstone Experience: Yellowstone National Park. . .FINALLY!

Well, we left on Friday, May 10, 2013 and arrived to Yellowstone National Park on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 in the late afternoon around 4:30ish.
FINALLY!
One thing about a road trip is to carefully plan it so that the driving is not the whole deal. In other words, keep the driving place to place at a minimum. Sure, it means some stops till the actual destination, but somehow it makes the real destination really fun.
And that is what Yellowstone National Park is. The most fascinating place that Mrs. RVFTLC and I have evah been to.
We had taken off from Jackson, Wyoming leisurely on Wednesday morning and we drove north out of town and straight through the Grand Teton National Park. And it is just as amazing as Yellowstone. What makes the Grand Tetons awesome in its way is the sheer height of the mountains. Here is a photo of it.

The highest of the peaks is over 13,000 feet. And several of the highest are at least 12,000 feet. Very high if I do say so myself. These are some of the most majestic mountains that I have ever seen. But we were driving through. And it was amazing, we were on a mission. The mission to finally get to the end of the line.
Yellowstone.
And within the hour, we were at the promised land. The south entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

WOO! HOO!
But we still had a way to go as we had to go to West Yellowstone, Montana, where we were going to stay for the next five days.
As we were driving through the park, we were on the lookout for animals. We read that we could see bears, bison, elk and moose, the big four, so to speak.
The first we saw were these beautiful, majestic elk.

 

Through the lens of our nothing Cannon camera, we made these two majestic elk look like they were only a few feet away. But they were actually about roughly 75 to 80 feet away from the road. The bad thing is this being Spring, they have shed their antlers. So the many times that we did see elk, sadly, none had their antlers.

But, there was more before we made it to our lodging destination.

Remember I wrote of bison?

Well, let me inform you now, yes there are a lot of bison. And yes, they DO own the park and most definitely the road. Here is an example.

Now this bison is trying to get on the road. But see the horse off to the right? These are mounted park rangers and one of their duties is to try, operative word is trying, to keep the bison off the road. Actually, they were successful. It is was nothing more than riding behind them at a good distance and gently leading the bison back to the grazing land that they love.
Eventually, we made it to West Yellowstone, Montana.
Now here is an observation.
As you are driving through Yellowstone and looking at the map, you realize that a sliver of the park actually lies in Montana. If you move your eye a certain way, you will miss the fact that you actually enter Montana and it is roughly about two miles and then you get the real sign that you are in Montana.

We proceeded to our hotel, the Kelly Inn. Now look at this photo:

Now I made this photo large to show the quaintness of this hotel.
If you look at the left roof, it looks like there is an animal walking on it. It is not a real animal but faux bears. There are the faux bears all over the hotel. Some right outside the upper third floor. Very cool.
And the room had a truly rustic theme.

Hey, there is that Cashew fellow in the photo! What a handsome young gentleman!
And I will not get in trouble putting this photo on this post. I have not done the in 15 minutes or less given the room the Right View From The Left Coast lived in look. I will let you figure that out.
And all this was just on our first day!
The travelogue does not end here. There is a lot more to share and photos.

Next on the Yellowstone Experience: Day two at Yellowstone!