Last night we had a meal at the restaurant next to the hotel. One of the waiters was there last October. She had gone home to Connecticut but had come back for the season and was living in a shed at present! Not a bad meal.
Anyway today we make our way to Cody at a leisurely pace. We stopped off at a store that we had got coffee at last October and picked up coffee and some buns for breakfast, then headed off to the 45th Parallel to eat them; the parallel is just before entering Wyoming in Yellowstone near Mammoth Hot Springs. From there we headed off back to Canyon Village.
We went back over Dunraven Pass. It has a shear rock face some of which has come away to reveal the underlying structure of massive hexagonal looking columns reaching upwards. Swinging down from there we went to Canyon Village and whereas yesterday we went to Inspiration Point, today we went further along where the parking was a touch easier. We went down a winding pathway and caught a glimpse of one of the waterfalls. However, that was as nothing as to what came next. We were soon standing alongside the top of a waterfall watching the water plunge into the canyon. There was so much mist that where the water settled on the sides it formed streams running back into the river and these weren't little streams. It's a bit of a cliché to write about the boiling, seething mass of water but that is barely adequate to describe the sound and spectacle of watching the water plunge down and hit the bottom.
We must have been there the best part of hour before moving on. We pulled in at Fishing Bridge Visitors Center. We picked up a couple of coffees and single scoops ice cream cones. The single was more like a triple but was it nice! As we sat and ate our ice cream and motor bike with a side car went by, nothing odd in that but there was a dog in the side car and it was wearing goggles!
We were at the top of Lake Yellowstone and is it big or what! Somewhere under that lake is a magma chamber waiting to explode though and take out most of the western world one way or another.
The road took us up to the Sylvan Pass which was an interesting experience as there were road works from the bottom of the pass to the top and down to the Eastern Entrance. It seemed to be one way working and we had to wait fifteen minutes as traffic from the other side had to finish coming across. The journey up was okay but there was heavy machinery and the road surface was gravel. This was also going up the side of the cliff face with shear drops on the right. Luckily with there only being us on the road it was okay. Slowly the convoy spread out and there was a large gap behind us and quite suddenly we were at the entrance and saying farewell to Yellowstone.
A straight drive to Cody until... passing alongside Buffalo Bill Reservoir what do we find but the Buffalo Bill Dam Visitors Center. We've not seen that mentioned or indicated anywhere in the guide books or anywhere else. It's a little gem. There's not much to it but it was an unexpected pleasure. It was one of the first all concrete dams to be built. Originally used to control the water it's now used to generate electricity too.
Leaving that soon found ourselves in Cody and our hotel for the night. We've done just over 1000 miles and this marks the half way point.
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