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.

Day 15- Billings MT and Hardin, MT

Although the day started out with some dark clouds in the sky, here in Billings, MT, the day turned out to be a beautiful one. The highlights of the day were Kathy's Birthday, and the Reenactment of Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn.            After Linda and I had our nails done at WalMart (the best job we have ever had done), we drove 46 miles then a couple of miles on dirt roads, to this field and hill in the middle of no-where, somewhere near Hardin, but not at the original site of the Battle. About a one hour reenactment of the history between the Indians and the Whites, the deterioration of their relationships and then the big battle. While we expected it to be either a bit amateurish or corney, it was neither and was well done, and obviously of great pride to the small town of Hardin. The horses and their riders were awesome. The little children (actors) behaved very well. Unfortunately, we never made it to the official site of the  Little Big Horn National Monument.

After it was over, we rushed back to Billings to finalize the birthday party for Kathy, only to find that the place we thought we had reserved, didn't have us down, and it really wasn't in  a part of town we wanted to be in at night with our Morgans. So I searched around for restaurants close to our hotel- C'mon In- and none could handle a party  of 27 at 7:30 PM. Ultimately, our hotel had a room we could use, I ordered Chinese takeout, ran to Costco for a birthday cake, and we had a wonderful party here. Although I wasn't able to take any pictures of Kathy, I will get one to use. Back to the room to do a bit of handwash, since we didn't seem to have time to get to the laundry today, Philip is asleep and I am trying to catch up on my blog before falling asleep myself.
And thankfully Linda's Dasy May ran perfectly today.

Day 14- Casper to Billings MT

We had high hopes today in leaving from Casper at a relatively decent time, since we had a 300 + mile drive to Billings, MT. Last night at the party, the local Ford Dealer had come to see the Morgans and asked if there was anything he could do to help us. In fact, their was. Dasy May needed new spark plugs and Ken hadn't been able to find the correct side,  and Linda's existing ones were very dirty. The owner has an MG and an excellent mechanic who could help us and would be delivering the spark plugs to us at the Ford Dealership, just bring the car over.

Naturally, Dasy May didn't want to run on more than 2 cylinders today so it ended up with Linda and I going to meet Mike, sans Dasy May and at least pick up the plugs which did. Somehow, Philip and George switched the spark plug wires to the correct plugs and they could get her to run on 3 cylinders. So as Linda and I traveled back to the hotel, clear across town, Philip and George hearded to the Ford Dealer. Eventaully we caught up with each other, and discovered Philip's spark plug wrench went wasn't long enough. Do off to by a new tool. The long spark plugs were the proper ones, and once inserted, we headed over Mike for a better check on the car. He advanced the timing for the elevation (and told us to retarded it in Vancouver), checked the compression- all okay, and also looked for the proper spark plug wires, which he didn't find. Now being 1 PM, we headed off for a 330 miles drive for the day going the scenic route. A stop for a root beer float, arrival at 8:15 PM, a few G&T's, no dinner and we retired exhausted for the day.