As we were waiting for our food to come out, a guy walked in the door and a couple people from behind the counter yelled out, “Hey Turtle! What’s happening?” This name rang a bell to my mom. In her Moon guidebook on Yellowstone and Grand Teton, there was a blurb about Tubby’s Bakery: Stop by Tubby’s Bakery for a morning cup of coffee and fresh-from-the-oven pastry. If you’re lucky, Turtle will be the barista pulling your espresso shots and foo-foo drinks; he really knows coffee. Could this man really be the Turtle? My mom went to ask him and it turned out that it was. We had just seen our first celebrity of the trip.
Our plan was to drive through the northern part of Yellowstone Park to the northeast exit, where we would continue on through Montana to Little Bighorn. It wasn’t long before we had to pull over to check out something cool: a little coyote was darting back and forth through the woods and trotting across the road. Check that animal off the list.
The next thing we stopped for was a grizzly with its cub! It was difficult to see the cub at first because they were walking through the high grass, but every once in a while the cub would stand up on its hind legs and look around, which was pretty much the funniest thing you can ever see. 
When the bears crossed the road, notice how, once again, no one decides to move out of the way. 
The next place we decided to go was Mammoth Springs, the place where, two days before, we had survived the lightning storm. We didn’t care so much about checking out the springs as we did about checking out the gift store. It was our last chance to buy souvenirs before we left the park. So, after we each got our final postcards and mugs, we said goodbye to Yellowstone and entered Montana. 
Our first stop in Montana was in a tiny mountain town at a restaurant that was obsessed with the Pittsburgh Steelers. There was memorabilia everywhere, including newspaper articles, plastic cups, and Superbowl shirts hanging on the walls. By the time we sat down at our table, I was expecting Ben Roethlisberger to be our waiter. Fortunately, he was not. Allison, my dad, and I ordered the restaurant specialty: the Cheddar Bomb burger. They were very, very good.We ate quickly because we had a long drive ahead of us. The first part of the drive was through the mountains, which were covered in snow. At one point, the snow on the side of the road piled at least five feet high.
Allison and I wanted to see what snow felt like in mid-June. 
On our way out of the mountains, we pulled over to check out an abandoned mining town, where a disaster in 1943 tragically killed 74 men (click on the picture below to read about it). They had left the town up as a memorial to the men who died. 
After we left the mountains, we had a few more hours on the road until we finally stopped for the day. We checked into the Super 8 Motel in Hardin, Montana, near the battlefield at Little Bighorn.
No comments:
Post a Comment