June 10, 1999

From Katie:

Today was very interesting day. We left Helena around 9:00 am and got to Yellowstone @ 12:30 and we saw elk, buffalo, moose, dear, coyote, chipmunk, great blue hearing , swan, and Canadian geese. we saw old faithful go off and then attempted to go to Billings, Mt. Ya know what it's 10:20pm and we left the park at 9:30 we tried to leave from 6:00-7:00 but the roads are horrendous up there talk about needing four wheel drive.

but that's about all I can recall for now. I hope my puppy is waiting for me at the hotel
Love,
Katie

From Mitch:

It was a good day, but long. We started late and did not realize how big Yellowstone was. We must have driven 200 miles inside the park on some of the worst known roads to mankind. One of the main roads was closed, which added another 50 miles to the trip. We entered through the north gate and exited the northeast gate over about 15 miles of gravel roads. It seemed the most direct route to Billings and was great, if it was not so late, but the sunset pictures were beyond belief. The route through the mountains, topping out at 11K feet was beautiful and at points the snow reached 12-15 feet deep along side the road. I could not believe how much snow there was and it was not that cold and it was mid JUNE!!!!

Because the roads were so bad and all the stops for animals (elk and buffalo count was high), but we sighted no bears (my only disappointment), it took forever. We only made 2 major stops for less than one hour and it took us 10 hours to drive through the park, plus another two hours to get over the mountain pass NE of the park.

Today was a long driving day, hope MT Rushmore is to bad to drive through.

Mitch

ps. when we got to the hotel at 11:30pm, Katie's puppy was waiting for her, she unboxed him and put him to bed in the back seat of the car, so he doesn't forget to get in the car again:-)

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6/10/99 11:17:38 Entering Yellowstone
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Old Faithful
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6/10/99 4:30:32 Started leaving the park
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WOW!!!!
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fox/coyote? next two shots
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My camera is still on PST, but we finally got "out of the park" at almost 10 pm local time