Day 28 to 30, Sunday June 17 to Tuesday June 19

Sunday we arrived at KOA West Yellowstone where we stayed three nights. The KOA is quite nice for a KOA however it is close to the highway and our site was one of the closer ones. Not much of a problem in an Alto since it is very good at blocking noise. What was a problem is that it started to rain shortly after we arrived and our site was pretty much flooded out by Monday morning. The picnic table and fireplace were in a swamp when we woke up and they remained unusable for the rest of our stay. The KOA tried to pump out the sites on our loop but it was a losing battle. Our site might have been the worst.

We spent each day exploring the park. A lot of driving and beautiful scenery interspersed with showers. Busy on the roads through the park and this was not the height of the season. We saw very little wild life in the park - a couple of Elk and a few Bison/Buffalo. This was disappointing. We did the lower loop road which has the geysers and hot springs. Old Faithful was a bust. We arrived shortly after it had spewed forth and were not willing to hang around the crowded tourist trap surrounding it for ninety minutes to see it spout so we just continued on. We had intended to do the upper loop of Yellowstone on Tuesday but we got mired in a traffic jam headed in that direction. After waiting in the jam for over an hour we threw in the towel and headed off to Grand Teton National Park. We were quite impressed with the Grand Teton mountains. We learned later that evening that the traffic jam going to the upper loop was caused by a herd of about thirty bison planted on the road and refusing to move. The person who told us this waited in the traffic jam for three hours and the bison were about four hundred feet off the road by the time he passed them.

Day 27, Saturday June 16

We crossed over to the States at Carway Alberta. Very small crossing point leading to hwy 89 in the US. We found a KOA near Helena MT at which to overnight. Nothing much to recommend it on the scenic side since the whole thing was just gravel. However, the staff were very good, washrooms were good and there was a nice little swapping library. We did get a couple of requests to see the Alto. People were friendly. The highlight was a small band of about 20 Prong Horn Antelopes in a field just across the road from the KOA. There were a number of very young antelopes and Tricia was able to get some great photos both near and far. I'll try to post some pictures later. Aside from that we found the scenery in Montana to be BEAUTIFUL with rolling hills surrounded by mountains but we couldn't see Glacier National Park because they were obscured by rain and fog in the distance..