Yellowstone, Day 2

When we woke up in Badlands National Park on Wednesday, it had rained overnight.  The result was a pretty spectacular view from the backdoor of our cabin (try to imagine it without the bright orange construction fencing)!

  

We made one brief stop to admire the beauty of the Badlands...

...and then we were on the road again!  Most of what passed between the Badlands and Yellowstone was actually very pretty, but the most spectacular part of our drive was the stretch through Big Horn National Forest.  It was very mountainous and very scenic - and I didn't even get carsick!  Even Kate was impressed (and by "impressed," I mean she slept through it).

This is what the rest of us saw:

Shortly after leaving the forest, we encountered our next new friend-in-the-wild - a bison just wandering down the highway!

By 5:00, we were at the East entrance to Yellowstone National Park.  We didn't stop to take photos at the "Welcome to Yellowstone" sign because it was cold and rainy.  How cold and rainy, you ask?  Well, check out the signs that were posted at the park entrance:

And while we didn't need snow tires or chains, we certainly encountered snow on our drive to the Yellowstone Lake hotel!

We also encountered our first geothermal features along the side of the lake....

...and our first Yellowstone wildlife!  This very windblown raven...

...and this elk hanging out in the snow.

We checked in, dropped our bags in our cabin, and let Sarah have a little snowball fight with Grammie in the parking lot.  

Then we walked up to the hotel where we had reservations for dinner with Grammie and PaPa.  The hotel, which was built in 1891, was beautiful inside and out, and the views of the lake and mountains were breathtaking.  Dinner was amazing, too (I had lobster ravioli and the other grown ups had the buffet featuring walleye, flank steak, trout and lots of amazing sides).

We were all pretty tired after a long day in the car, and our full bellies made it easy to fall asleep that night. After all, we had a full day of sight-seeing to prepare for the next day!