Yellowstone 2012, part 1

After overnight stays in Lincoln, NE and Casper, WY we arrived to Yellowstone in 29 hours of travel time.  It was a long 2 1/2 day drive but totally worth it.  The weather was much warmer than when we went last year.  Highs during the day were in the upper 70's-low 80's which is a little warm to me.  I liked it last year when the highs were in the lower 60's and morning snow flurries.  There is no air conditioning in the Inn so the last couple nights we slept with both windows open and a little fan they provided for us.  It's good sleeping weather out there except for the birds that start to chirp around 4:30 a.m. :)

I have only organized a small number of our photos so am going to post several times to cover the basics of our trip.  We logged 4, 220 miles on this trip!!  I think this trip was more tiring because we pretty much arrived that way.  I just had so much going on during the last couple weeks before we travelled with work and Grandma dying that I never got rested before leaving.  We also hit the park running as soon as we checked-in instead of taking a day to recuperate from travelling.  By Wednesday afternoon we were both just pooped out.  We finally took some time to slow down and by Thursday morning we were energized enough to really enjoy our last two days.

Here are some pictures of our room at Old Faithful Inn.  At first we had a room on the backside of what is called the West Wing.  It was small and the window opened to the back parking lot where there were construction vehicles and staff taking their smoke breaks.  The window brought no breeze in and even though we don't spend much time in our room, I knew we would not be happy there.   After about 15 minutes in the first room I called the front desk and explained our dissatisfaction and we ended up paying for an upgrade to the room shown below.  It was well worth it!

Room 1074 was on the front of the East Wing and as you can see, was in the corner so we had two windows which carried in a nice breeze and views of some of the geysers.  It was also just a sidewalk-walk away from the general store where we ate some meals and did a lot of shopping.

Over towards the left of the photo is a closet and door to the hallway as well as the bathroom door.

In the above picture, our room is the second window up from the ground on the left side and around the front.  I think the very first floor is used for staff, laundry, etc. We could just go down one flight of stairs and would be at the white double doors when we went somewhere.

View from the side window in our room.  It was nice to have the little table and chairs so we could eat breakfast or just sit and people/geyser/wildlife watch.

Bob and I at the south entrance of Yellowstone.

We had a night visitor in the form of "wildlife" our first night in the Inn.  We brought a bag of snacks in with us and after lights out we awoke to a scratching noise.  We both laid still for a few minutes and kept hearing it.  After turning on the light the noise went away.  We turned off the light and waited and heard the noise again.  Bob got up and searched through our bags and ended up putting the food bag in the bathtub with the bathroom door closed and we never heard the noise again, however, later in the week Bob saw a mouse go from under one guest's room door across the hall to another room one morning!  Look, the Inn is over 100 years old and is in the middle of a forest so you have to expect that it's not airtight.  ha ha!