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Author: Jerry

West Yellowstone, MT

West Yellowstone, MT

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We spent 18 days in West Yellowstone taking in the local attractions and seeing as much of Yellowstone National Park as we could. Even though there are museums and other things to do in the town of West Yellowstone (like shopping for the ladies :-)) the big attraction here is of course Yellowstone National Park. While I’ll talk about that more later, let’s just say that Yellowstone absolutely must be on your bucket list if you have never been before!

West Yellowstone is an ideal place to stay (unless you are inside the park somewhere) because from there you can easily get to anywhere in the park without too much of a drive. Of course, too much is relative. The park is very large so you will be doing a lot of driving but from the west side you’re sort of in the middle of the action and you are also closest to the most popular sites within the park such as Old Faithful.

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Devils Tower, WY

Devils Tower, WY

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Bear Lodge is one of many Indian names given to the tower. Other American Indian names include Bear’s Tipi, Home of the Bear, Tree Rock and Great Gray Horn. Many Indians believed a bear scratched the side of the “mountain” with its claws and then lived inside the structure. Col. Richard Dodge translated the name to Devils Tower in 1875 and the name stuck. Some contend that Col. Dodge simply got a bad translation of the indigenous name; others say it was an intentional renaming. Dodge led a military expedition in the area to confirm reports of gold in the Black Hills and to survey the area. Scientists at that time thought the tower was the core of an ancient volcano. Recent data suggests it is actually an igneous intrusion. About 50 million years ago molten magma was forced into sedimentary rock above and then it cooled underground. As it cooled it contracted and fractured into columns. Over millions of years, erosion of the sedimentary rock exposed the tower.

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Hardin, MT

Hardin, MT

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Hardin is a small town of about 3500 people in south eastern Montana. It was incorporated in 1911 and Thomas D. Campbell operated the nation’s largest wheat farm on 95,000 acres near there while pioneering the use of industrial machinery in farming. The Holly Sugar Company also established a sugar beet–processing plant in Hardin in 1937. Interestingly, with Hardin being in the middle of nowhere, Bitcoin miner Marathon apparently has a large mining operation in Hardin today because of low cost coal fired power generation nearby. With efforts to close down the coal fired plant, solar is being built to replace the coal. So what was the draw here for us? The Little Bighorn Battlefield is about 15 miles south of Hardin.

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Livingston, MT

Livingston, MT

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After leaving West Yellowstone, we stopped in Livingston, MT for 3 nights before heading further east along Interstate 90. Paradise Valley south of Livingston where our KOA is located is gorgeous and has been the location where several movies were filmed including “A River Runs Through It”. Unfortunately, we only had a few hours one evening where the smoke from California wildfires cleared enough to see the mountains surrounding the valley.

The Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803 to 1806 roughly followed what is today an Interstate highway and passed through Livingston on July 15, 1806. Livingston was also a gateway to Gardiner where the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park both during the days of steam engine trains and today as automobiles make their way down US-89 and into the park. As you might guess, there is a lot of history in the area and we hope to come back here in the future to spend more time investigating all there is to see.

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Tetonia, ID / Grand Teton National Park

Tetonia, ID / Grand Teton National Park

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We spent two weeks in the area around Grand Teton National Park. Like most people, Grand Teton was one of the must see, bucket list places on our list in the United States. Since there were no RV camping spots available for us in the national park or Jackson, WY we chose to stay in the small town of Tetonia, ID on the west side of the Teton mountain range. We took several day trips into the national park and thank goodness we did not have to pull the trailer over the 10% grade of Teton Pass and into Jackson, WY. We saw many cars not even pulling trailers on the shoulder cooling down. While here, our good friends Tammie and Peter from Texas joined us. Not knowing about the 10% grades, they pulled their rig over the pass getting to Tetonia. Although they made it just fine, they said “Never again!”

Unfortunately, with the exception of one or two days, smoke from wildfires in California blanketed the mountains and the views were not as spectacular as we had hoped they would be. In some cases we just had to imagine how beautiful the mountains would be on a nice clear blue day. In a few cases, the pictures took on a surreal look aided by the smoke.

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