Unfortunately, all accommodation in Yellowstone was fully booked, so we only spent one day driving through the park. We saw several animals and interesting sights and were really impressed by the "Old Faithful" geysir. The next day we visited various ghost towns, but unfortunately only Elkhorn turned out to be of much interest. In the National Bison Range we drove on a "bison safari" and saw hundreds of these strange animals.

July 21, Sunday

We got up at 0700 and I had a shower before we left the motel. We drove all the way to Cody (50 miles) before stopping at McDonald's to have pancakes for breakfast. Cody seemed to have "wild west" atmosphere, with several of the guests wearing cowboy hats etc. At this point, we did not have time to explore this any further, but we planned on stopping in Cody again on our way back.

The scenery had been semi-desert until now, but again this changed as we headed up into the mountains towards Yellowstone National Park. Before arriving at the park, though, we drove through some very nice mountain scenery. It appeared to be much drier here than in the mountains of the Big Horn National Forest, but it was spectacular nonetheless. We also made a brief stop at the Buffalo Bill Dam.

Eventually we reached Yellowstone and had to pay 20$ for a 7 day entry permit. This would enable us to come and go as much as we liked during the next week, although according to plan we would not be using it for more than two days. We continued upwards through some more nice scenery. At Yellowstone lake, we inquired about acommodation in the park, but were told that everything was full. It was, however, recommended, that we should check back later in the day in case there had been any cancellations. If still nothing was available, we decided to spend the whole day in the park and stay overnight in a town outside.

On driving around inside the park, the scenery was not really that nice everywhere. There seemed to have been a lot of forest fires and various areas were completely burned out. However, we stopped at different geysirs which was very interesting, since we had never seen anything like that before. The highlight was probably Old Faithful.

We arrived around 1330 and were informed that the next eruption was estimated at 1410. Since we were quite hungry, we bought a pizza each and took along to the site. After eating, we got ready with our cameras together with lots of other people. The geysir fooled us several times, almost seeming like it was about to start, only for it all to die down. However, around 1415 it really got going and kept it up for almost two minutes. It was very impressive.

After having checked out the souvenir shops, we continued driving towards the northern exit, making stops at the interesting sites along the way. We saw lots of geysirs and lots of deer. Around 1810 we left the park and entered the town of Gardiner. This meant we had crossed into Montana.

We decided to spend the night here and got one room at Western Naire motel, for 72$. Then we went out for dinner and ate at a cafe in the town. I had beef liver, Tina had a chicken salad and our parents had Chicken Steak. They also had a huge ice cream before returning to the motel. The weather was now getting clouded and some thunderstorms were starting over the park. We sat outside watching it, while I updated the diary. Around 2230 we went to bed.

July 22, Monday

We got up at 0730 and had a breakfast buffet at a restaurant across the street. Today we had no particular plan, except driving towards the west and see what turned up. After some hours of driving, we stopped at a restaurant to have lunch, all having sandwiches with french fries. While eating we discussed our plans for the remainder of the day, and decided to first drive to Butte and have a look around there.

Our first stop in Butte was at the Tourist information, from where a sightseeing trolley bus was about to leave just as we arrived. However, unfortunately, the tour was already full so we decided to look around for ourselves instead of waiting for the next tour. Butte, apparantly was a typical example of a copper town and had probably been a busy place a hundred years ago. It was not terribly busy now, though, in fact it looked quite empty and desolate with only a few shops open. After walking around in the historical district for a little while, we instead decided to move on.

We continued towards Helena, mainly because according to the Lonely Planet, we would drive past several ghost towns on the way. However, the two towns on their list (xxxx and Boulder) turned out not to be ghost towns at all, especially Boulder looked quite busy. We were more optimistic about Elkhorn when it turned out it was a drive of nearly 20 km on a dust and gravel road to get there.

We were eventually rewarded with a real ghost town. Unfortunately, the majority of the buildings were in poor shape, but the saloon and some other ones had been well conserved and made it easy to imagine how it had once been a busy town of 2500 inhabitants in the 1880's. Elkhorn originally grew up around a mine that was started in 1868, but the good days ended when the price of silver fell in 1892. There were nobody else around when we arrived, and it would have been a nice and quiet place to have a picnic, but unfortunately we hadn't brought any food along.

After just passing through Helena, we exited the highway once more to check out the final ghost town Rimini, but it turned out to be another disappointment. Although one or two old buildings remained, several people obviously lived there permanently.

Continuing towards Missoula, we stopped around 1830 to spend the night in a small town called Drummond. This time we got two nice rooms (42$ each) at Ryan's Inn, quite close to the railway track. We never saw any passenger trains in the US, but there were a lots of cargo trains passing by, some of them extremely long with more than 100 carriages! Counting the carriages became a favourite thing to do for Tina and Tor.

We ate Taco Salad for dinner at a local restaurant called Wagonwheel, having Apple pie with ice cream for dessert. It was very good.

July 23, Tuesday

We got up at 0800. The Wagonwheel restaurant seemed to be almost full for breakfast, so instead we went to a place close to our motel, which turned out to be nearly empty. There was nothing wrong with the food, though. I had poached eggs and toast, while the others had pancakes.

There was supposed to be another ghost town quite close to Drummond, but after driving for half an hour on the I-90(?) without seeing any exit to it, we realised that we must have missed it somehow. However, we decided on not going back, fearing it might be another disappointment and waste of time. Instead we drove straight to Missoula where we made stops at two quilt shops for Kirsten to look around.

A short drive from Missoula was the National Bison Range. It cost 4$ for each vehicle to be allowed to drive around inside. At the visitor center they had some exhibitions and information about the bison (usually incorrectly referred to as a Buffalo). It was incredible to learn that while there had originally been millions of bison, they had almost been hunted to the point of extinction with only a few hundred left in the US around 1900. Fortunately, they had now made a nice recovery, partly thanks to national parks like this one.

We drove around on a "safari" for about two hours. Almost immediately we were caught inside a large herd of Buffalos crossing the road. It was a lot of fun to see the bisons so close, although Tor was worried about possible damage to the car. There were all kinds of bisons from small calves to some really huge ones.

Eventually coming on top of a hill we had a great view of the surrounding scenery. We were all really starting to enjoy the Montana scenery. Although it perhaps seemed "too open" for our liking in some places, it was becoming quite clear why it was famous for the "big sky". On our safari we also saw a mountain sheep with big horns and Pronghorn, but unfortunately no bear.

After the safari we were quite hungry and had a bison burger with "potato tots" at a fastfood place right outside the park. After some more driving, we crossed into Idaho, which meant went through another time zone and gained an extra hour.

We didn't see much of Idaho, except for stopping in an old mining town called Wallace and walking around there for a while. It looked quite nice, much nicer than many of the other towns we had seen, and there were quite a few interesting shops as well.

We filled the car up with petrol (gas) before leaving. The gas pumps in the US all seemed to be rather old-fashioned, requiring the driver to pull a handle and occasionally push some buttons on the pump, before it would start filling. Tor was not very impressed with this system and pointed out that this was much simpler in Europe, where one could start filling right away. The gas was extremely cheap, though, about 1/3 of the price in Europe where gas is heavily taxed.

We wanted to get reasonably close to Seattle, so that we would be able to drive all the way there tomorrow. Therefore we continued driving until reaching Spokane, where we, on Tina's request, stopped at the Spokane Valley Mall. We wandered around the mall for a while (I spent most of the time in the book store). Tor bought a card reader for his digital camera since the connection cable between the camera and computer had been forgotten at home. The card reader turned out to be a very convenient way of transferring the pictures to Tina's laptop.

We spent the night at Motel 6 (two rooms, each at 51$) in the Spokane suburbs. Dinner was eaten at Taco Bell and finally we had cheesecake for dessert at Burger King. Tor also called Vernon to let him know that we would be arriving the next day.