Day 8 Billings to West Yellowstone, Montana

 I can't believe how great the weather's been. The days have been t-shirt warm in the day and sweater cool in the evening. It's perfect for touring Montana and Wyoming. Today's drive was pretty simple, we drove west to Bozeman and then south to West Yellowstone, and it was only 240 miles. When we got to Bozeman, instead of going around the city we decided to go through it check it out. So we went directly through the center of town and down Main St. It's an exceptionally nice downtown and would definitely be worth spending a few days hanging out there, but we had Yellowstone in mind. When we turned south the scenery totally changed. Route 193 is two lanes and runs for 90 miles along the Gallatin river through the Rocky Mountains. The river was running extremally fast and high so it was full of kayakers, rafters, and fishermen. It was a beautiful and fascinating 90 mile drive. 

We arrived in West Yellowstone shortly after noon and checked into a fairly dumpy motel. We were only going to be there for one night, so it didn't really matter too much what the place was like. At least it was clean and in the middle of town. We sort of unpacked and walked around looking for a place to have lunch. There wasn't much of anything that looked special. So for no particular reason we picked Bullwinkles.  We each had a drink and split a Bison and Elk burger. The burger was good and the drink was needed. But best of all we chatted with a guy who was riding his bicycle cross country from Oregon to Virginia and he was taking a day off the bike. He was riding solo but told us he had ridden a few days with a girl he met on the road who too was riding solo but from Seattle to Las Vegas.. They had separated four days ago because she wanted a day off the bike and he wanted to keep going. Amazingly, as we were chatting, that girl walked in. They had planned to meet in Yellowstone and it was really cool to see them so happy to see each other. She was in her 20's and beautiful and he was at least twice her age and not as beautiful (That's solely my opinion). So I don't think there was anything going on other than they got along very well and they both were on a similar missions. Brilliant!

Later in the day I think I walked the whole town twice looking for something of interest. I was totally unsuccessful, but maybe it was just me being goofy. Anyhow, we went back to Bullwinkles for dinner. I had Elk Ravioli and Sylvia had pan fried Walleye which was excellent. We spent a lot of time talking to the bartender about the Park and what to do once we got there. It was some really good information, I'm planning on entering the Park by 7, or whenever Sylvia feels like it.

Sylvia's Walleye