Day 17- Yellowstone

As we have been to Yellowstone twice before, and we are very tired, and need to catch up on things such laundry, bill paying, and blogging, we are taking it easy today. We slept in while Linda went to church, then had breakfast in the dining room of the Old Faithful Inn where we are staying. Then off to do the laundry at the new Snow Lodge which is a nice walk from Old Faithful Inn. Next time we will stay at this new lodge, even tho' it doesn't have the old charm, it does have internet access and is air conditioned. A quick trip to the grocery store to be sure we had tonic for happy hour, and back to the OFI. We found that at 3:15 PM, one can potentially book dinner in the dining room, so managed to get a table for 8 at 7 PM. Kathy and George will join us, to hear the stories about George and a bear having a close encounter today, to hear of Michael and Steve's fishing trip, and Sherry's day off as well. It will be a fun dinner with several very talkative people. We hear the others will be coming to the Snow Lodge for dinner- no reservations but apparently the wait isn't too bad. We watched the video of Yellowstone in the gift shop and we have a video at home, so those will be our close encounters with Yellowstone.

Day 16- Billings to Yellowstone

For the first time on this trip, we woke to light rain and clouds in the sky. Hoping by the time we left, the dark clouds would be gone and bright sunlight appear. However, that didn't happen, so we packed up and headed out, without the top up, without rain jackets, and prayed for sunshine. It rained very little but was threatening for quite a while as we headed off to Cody Wyoming. Upon arrival in Cody, we unloaded the rack, pulled out the side curtains to cut out some wind, and pulled out the rain jackets. Of course, that made the sun appear and the remainder of the day was beautiful as we worked our way to Yellowstone. As we had already been to the wonderful historical museum in Cody where all the others went, we had coffee in the Irma Hotel, and walked around town. This is Callie and Colin at the $100,000 bar at the Irma.

Buffalo Bill Cody built this hotel many years ago, and it is beautiful. We then joined the others for lunch at the Irma then on through the scenic Buffalo Bill highway and canyon into the east entrance of Yellowstone.  An ice cream stop (yes, all we do it eat) at Yellowstone lake,

then on to Old Faithful for the night. After leaving, guess what, Linda's car started acting up again and died upon arriving at the hotel. We are at 8000 feet again, so she may not have liked that. The boys found the new spark plugs loose, and a lot of junk on one of them again. So they tightened the plugs and will put on Ken's extra spark plug wires tomorrow and hope all that helps again. It is very frustrating to all of us at this point.