August 10th, 2019

Sam and I woke up at the AirBnB in Missoula at 8:00 and after a quick breakfast we hit the road en route to Yellowstone at 9:00.

We made a few minor stops for bathrooms, gas etc. and took our lunch on the shore of the Madison River south of Ennis, Montana at 12:30. We made it to the West entrance of Yellowstone at 2:00 and after stopping for some supplies headed in to the park.

Our campground for the night was at Bridge Bay near Yellowstone lake which was on the opposite end of the figure 8 that is Yellowstone from where we came in so we decided to do the west leg of the southern loop to take us there for bedtime. This meant going past the majority of the fumaroles, geysers and springs.

We stopped at most of the major locations and took in the sights. Our first stop we were harassed back to the truck by a brief rainstorm that caught us unprepared and the rest we were left unmolested. It was my first trip to Yellowstone and it was pretty cool to see all the park features but I do admit to getting used to seeing them frequently quite quickly....

The last big stop of the day was Old Faithful and we arrived there at 5:45. We had just missed the last eruption and the next one was at 7:00. We passed the time by buying some stickers in the gift shop and enjoying the ice cream, I got quite a large portion. We sat down and saw Old Faithful erupt right on schedule which was definitely the best geyser for me. 

Finally we filled up on the expensive Yellowstone gas (still cheaper than Canada) and made our way to our campground. The campground was large and pretty wide open and the campers were packed pretty closely but it was a place to sleep so we set up camp. There were a couple of large male Elk right in the campground that weren't afraid of people whatsoever which was interesting.

We prepared our dinner of rigatoni, sausage, cheese and coleslaw and after cleaning up and playing a bit of music we settled in to our tent for the night. 

Lunch on the bank of the Madison River

Temperature in truck, I think there was a glitch

We made it to our first stop!

I got too much ice cream...

Obligatory old faithful shot

First camp dinner