Day 11: West Wendover to Gardiner

We had a long day of driving ahead of us today; possibly the longest of the entire holiday. We were certainly going to be making our way through the most different states.

Our morning started off in Nevada, where we had a brief walk around West Wendover in search of breakfast. There really isn't a lot there, except casinos.

When we checked into the hotel last night we were told that there was a shuttle bus that could take us between casinos. Seems bizarre given the town can't be longer than a mile from start to finish, but I caught sight of the shuttle buses parked outside one of the hotels!

We were on the road shortly after 9am, initially driving north through Nevada.

It felt a bit like we were in the Wild West. We passed a train that reminded me of a rollercoaster at the American Adventure theme park back in the day  

We were definitely in the middle of nowhere, but it was very scenic.

After half an hour or so we left Nevada...

...and drove back into Utah.

This part of Utah was quite mountainous too.

We caught sight of some water in the distance.

Consulting the map revealed that the route was taking us around the top of the Great Salt Lake.

After that we said goodbye to Utah and drove into Idaho.

We drove through miles and miles of Idaho on quite a small road, only passing the occasional farm.

After four hours on the road, we arrived at the town of Pocatello, which is where we were planning to have lunch. We ate at a restaurant called Applebee's, where there was a great deal to get a starter and two main courses for $25. We had boneless chicken wings as the starter...

...then I had macaroni cheese with chicken as my main course (though it was technically penne, not macaroni!)...

...and Tim had lime chilli chicken with Mexican rice.

Both our meals were really good. Fortunately, we hadn't wanted to order anything that involved broccoli because we overheard the waitress having to explain to several tables that it was off the menu as a result of a national broccoli shortage

From Pocatello we were back on the road, travelling north through Idaho until we reached a road called the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway. We parked the car in a forest car park and set off on a short walk to find the falls.

The river here is called Henry's Fork and it's a tributary of the Snake River, which we saw in several locations last time we were in Idaho.

We could hear the falls and soon we got our first glimpse of them.

A series of wooden steps and walkways enabled us to get a closer view.

It was a really beautiful waterfall

We walked a little further and came to the place where the river goes over the top of the falls.

It reminded me a bit of some of the waterfalls we visited in Bosnia last autumn

Another nature trail led away through the forest.

We followed it for a little while then turned around, conscious that we still had 100 miles of ground to cover before the end of the day!

Once back in the car, we left Idaho behind and entered Montana

We are staying for the next few nights in the town of Gardiner, Montana. From where we were, just outside the town of West Yellowstone, there were two ways to reach Gardiner. The first route, which was 165 miles and would take three hours, avoided driving through Yellowstone National Park. The second was only 54 miles and involved driving straight through the centre of the park. We opted for the shorter route  

This geography was essentially why we had had to cancel our trip to Yellowstone in 2022, after the road from Gardiner into the park was washed away by flooding. We had had accommodation booked in Gardiner that year too, but after the flood the only way to get into the national park from there would have been to do the three-hour drive to and from West Yellowstone every day. It definitely wouldn't have been sustainable!

The good news is that, while the collapsed road from Gardiner into Yellowstone has not been rebuilt, the National Park Service has been able to upgrade an older route which was previously a single-track dirt road, tarmacking it and turning it into a two-lane road. This Old Gardiner Road is now the new way in and out of the national park from Gardiner. And that means we've been able to rebook our 2022 trip for 2025

I was very excited when we finally drove through the entrance gates of Yellowstone National Park. It was after 6pm by this point and we wanted to get to Gardiner before dark, so the plan was just to drive straight through and resist the temptation to stop and look at anything. That resolve lasted for approximately 10 minutes, after which Tim caught sight of something amazing from the side of the road...

Our first bison! Wow!

There are around 5,000 bison living in Yellowstone, but I didn't know whether we'd actually succeed in seeing any. We'd looked for them in Custer State Park and Grand Teton National Park during our 2022 road trip, with no success, so this was super exciting

After that we drove for miles through the park, every so often passing places where steam was visibly coming out of the ground.

Then all of a sudden, the car in front us ground to a halt. I figured there was probably a deer in the road or something.  And then...

I guess I needn't have worried about whether or not we were going to see bison!

That wasn't even our final wildlife encounter of the day. As we drove through a small settlement within the park called Mammoth, we saw a group of elk by the roadside.

This one with the antlers was the most impressive - significantly bigger than the reindeer I'd seen in Lapland this summer.

Wow, what an exciting journey

From there we only had a couple more miles to drive, down the new (/old!) road into Gardiner.

We checked into our hotel, where the room is quite basic (but still includes two beds!). Prices around Yellowstone are incredibly expensive, so this is costing around USD 300/night.

Before settling down to do the blog, there was one more task we needed to complete: tracking down the general store in Gardiner and buying some bear spray. While we're very much hoping not to meet any, there are an estimated 1,000 grizzly bears living in the Yellowstone area. While bear spray (essentially a pepper spray for bears!) is illegal in the UK as an offensive weapon, it's readily available in grocery stores in Montana and we were able to pick some up with our crisps and wine, without even getting ID'd  

Suitably armed for the rest of our adventures, we went back to the hotel for an early night. As you'll see from the map, it's been a very long day!