Thank Our Lucky Stars: YELLOWSTONE! FROM IDAHO!

June 2017

“Yellowstone! Really? You want me to get reservations in Yellowstone? Now?”

In April?

My husband doesn’t ask for much?

I was kind of shocked when he asked if we could do it.

I was even more shocked when we did it!

In the passed when we decided to go to Yellowstone for our summer vacation
it was usually November or December the previous year!
I’d start calling in January and it usually took multiple phone calls to get a reservation!

When we met our kids and grandkids there in June last year, our daughter Bonnie started calling in January! There was ONE spot available in all of June that we would fit in!

When I checked of course there were no sites in the park I could reserve but I found a place called Valley View RV in Island Park, ID that had a spot. It was right outside the west entrance and was a Passport America Park so it wasn’t horribly expensive!
And BONUS… they had an oversized washer and dryer right there on the premises!
The couch cover where the dogs sit was starting to smell
like they’d spent a month with a pack of wild dogs!

Once again we headed to one of our favorite National Parks!
We got to Valley View just in time to wash the couch cover
and we decided to wash the bedspread while we were at it too!

We only had 2 days at this place then we planned to go to Gros Ventre Campground in the Tetons for 4 days. Our sightseeing in Yellowstone would be limited to 1 day so we got out our map to look over what we wanted to see! I suppose you could do the whole figure 8 layout of the park in one day but that wouldn’t leave much time to actually see anything. We decided to do the upper loop first and do the lower half of the lower loop as we drove to Gros Ventre.

The next morning bright and early we headed into the park! First stop: West Yellowstone, MT to fill up with gas! It felt like we’d gone through a time warp back to the 70S! The line spilled out onto the street! Every pump had 4 or 5 cars waiting! With no other option we pulled in. A couple of cars abruptly pulled out of our line so that there was only one car ahead of us. WhooHoo, our lucky day! The driver was using the window squeegee to wash his window so I figured he was almost done. WRONG! I realized why the other cars had pulled out! He AND all his family members, even Grandma, were washing his entire car with window squeegees! We waited, not patiently, for a few minutes. Then I noticed the car! It looked like they’d just crossed the Serengeti. After a rainstorm! This was going to take more than a few minutes!

I HAD ONE DAY TO SEE YELLOWSTONE!

I was NOT going to spend it here waiting for them!

I stepped out onto the running board and yelled,
“Excuse me, this is a gas station NOT a car wash! We just want gas!”

I’m pretty sure he was foreign. He smiled and kept saying, “So sorry, so sorry!” He gathered his brood in a language I didn’t understand. They went to every pump to return the squeegees and got in the car. A sullen looking teenage girl, glaring at me the whole time! They pulled ahead to the tiny parking area, went back to retrieve their squeegees and resumed the car washing! It took quite a while to fill up our enormous gas tank but as we were driving away I looked up and saw that they were only about 2/3s done with their car wash! Larry just looked at me and grinned as we drove through West Yellowstone!

Larry insisted that we stop at the Canyon Campground first “just to check” if they had any reservable sites in the park. I saw it as just another delay, there was NO WAY they were going to have a site available! THEY DID!!! I was shocked! So instead of 4 days at Gros Ventre, we’d spend a day at Bridge Bay Campground in Yellowstone and 3 days at GV! It made the day so much more relaxing knowing we’d have another!

In the book I wrote, Song of The Ghost Dog, the main character goes to West Yellowstone on a date.
They eat dinner at Bullwinkles!
Every time we go through West Yellowstone I get a picture of Bullwinkles!