9/8 - Layton to West Yellowstone, Montana

We had a very nice 300-mile drive to West Yellowstone today. Traffic was light, the roads were good and the weather was perfect.  We are in the nicest campground we've ever been in with real grass between the sites, no restrictions on where dogs can walk, clean and neat with super check-in staff. 

First great view of the day was Antelope Island as we were leaving Hill AFB.  

A gap in the mountains with beautiful farmland about 20 miles from where my cousin lives.

One of the ancient geological oddities along I-15 in northern Utah.....rock in columnar form which is in the process of collapsing.

An even stranger thing is the Hell's Half Acre lava field in southern Idaho. I-15 crosses the southeast corner of the 150 square mile area. It looks like slabs and chunks of asphalt.

Many miles further north we got our first glimpse of the Grand Teton Mountains which are in Wyoming on the WY/ID border.  This is the view from Idaho in the west, not what one usually sees in the beautiful pictures taken from the east side of the range. They were too far away to get a good shot but they were still very impressive.....very high and much more jagged than any other mountains we've seen.

On the approach to the Idaho-Montana border the land changes from flat grass and farmlands to hills and then quickly to mountains.

Heading for the Targhee Pass.

The change from flat to mountains is fairly abrupt, although not as much as where the Wasatch Range rises from the valley next to Great Salt Lake. Most of today's drive was in the elevation range of the mid-4000's, but we crossed the Targhee Pass over these mountains at 7072'.  The town of West Yellowstone is a little lower (around 6650') but it's considerably cooler than what we left this morning.

Yellowstone NP probably always battles fires, but there have been two of particular interest to us over the past few weeks. The Maple fire is about 4 miles from town and has periodically threatened to close the west entrance which is the one we must use to see the park. There was strong wind today and when we arrived smoke from this fire was billowing high overhead. Fortunately, the wind was pushing the smoke to the east instead of on top of us. Around 5:00 pm the wind dropped to nothing and the smoke cleared up. That gave the firefighters a break.

The other fire of interest is the Berry fire (all fires are named for identification) which closed the south entrance to the park about two weeks ago. It would have prevented us from seeing Grand Tetons National Park if it had remained closed. We were relieved to learn there was a massive and successful effort to get the road re-opened.

We had a really spectacular sunset this evening. There's no smoke in these two pictures....it's all clouds.

Tomorrow's schedule isn't set yet. It will depend on where Ashlen and Eli are and if we can meet up with them.  They're somewhere in Wyoming tonight but haven't reached the park yet.