Our next stop, Yellowstone. Oh, but wait, the Idaho Potato Museum? What is that about? So, once we saw that they had RV parking we made the stop in Blackfoot, Idaho. It’s a small, but interesting museum. We even received a small bag of instant potatoes. You know, taters for out-of-staters. They seem to have everything potato related. One thing that we found surprising was that people have been dehydrating potatoes for thousands of years. In South America, Chuño was made by using the hot days and freezing nights in the Andes Mountains to remove the toxins making the potato both edible and portable.
We continued on to West Yellowstone, Montana, our home for the next 5 nights. We couldn’t get a spot inside the park, but our RV park was just a half mile from the West Entrance gate. It was also walkable to the IMAX theater and downtown West Yellowstone.
Day 1 – We knew, we wanted an early start as we were visiting the park on Labor Day Weekend. So, we were at the gate around 7:30 the next morning. Since, it was a holiday weekend, we decided to see how much we could get done doing the northern loop. We had our audio Shaka Guide going as we toured around. (Really a great way to do a self-guided tour.)
We made stops along the way to our first major stop the Norris Geyser Basin. Made it to the basin about 9:30. We did both the long and short loop walks around the basin. By the time we were leaving it was getting crowded.
We then continued up to the Mammoth Hot Springs area. We took the Upper Terrace Drive and walked some of the lower terrace areas a bit.
We drove the Blacktail Plateau Drive, which is about a 7-mile dirt road detour. Saw a few bison, but nothing else. Made a quick stop at the petrified tree. Drove toward the NE Entrance and through the Lamar Valley. We spotted some Pronghorn Antelope and herds of Bison. Made our way over to Tower Falls and decided that was it for the day. Headed back toward the West Entrance but managed to stop at Virginia Falls before heading out.
