Day 8 (9/13/11) Part 1

I am going to do today's blog in 2 parts hopefully. I am currently at Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone National Park and I have good cell service for my mobile hotspot. All of the park buildings will not let you plug anything in for "security" reasons. It really makes you want to pay your income taxes! I had to walk about a half mile to a private hotel to be able to plug my cell phone in to use it as a mobile hot spot. My destination tonight is over in a state park near Lolo Pass in Montana and I am not sure if I will have power or cell service there. It is in a very remote mountainous area, so you never know. In any event, I had a great night last night in Cody, Wy. I slept very well in my tent and went to bed early, so I was up before daylight and working on packing up. I traveled the 60 or so miles over to the East entrance to Yellowstone up past Cody dam and lake, then on around the Yellowstone Lake to Old Faithful. When you leave Cody it is a climb all the way to and into the park until you reach the Continental Divide at about 8,600 feet. I don't know how cold it got here in Yellowstone last night, but let's just say I was under dressed. My first order of business at the Lodge was to get a cup of hot coffee. It tasted so good! The road leading in was beautiful. Nice twisty turns and rocky canyons were the order of the day. Great motorcycle stuff that we riders dream of. Usually, Yellowstone is one big traffic jam of crawling motorhomes and buses that stop at every deer or bear within sight of the road. Not today. I did not see a single animal. I am thinking it might be because of the smoke in the air. A beetle is defliating all the large pine trees and whole mountains are almost devoid of green. I beleve the Forestry service is burning huge tracts to renew the forest, so I am guessing the smoke chases all the wildlife back into the forested sections of the park. It is a shame, because I remember what the park looked like back when all the trees were green and healthy. It looks nothing like that today as you can see from the pictures. In any event Old Faithful is still faithful and putting on her show abour every hour. I am stopping here today to skype the 6th grade classes at Kulp School in Lansdale. I thought the students there might like to see an elementary school I passed on the way into the park. It was a log structure about the size of a house in many of neighborhoods around us and it housed K to 5 grades. There was ONE bus dropping students off. What a world of difference from most of this country. Well I better get ready to log on with the students at Kulp. If there is no Part 2 today, you will know that I did not have service to log into my blog.