Sept 2, Wed - day 27
Mountain Home, Idaho to West Yellowstone, Montana
Weather-scattered clouds to clear-temp from 45 at 7:00 am to 100 at noon to high 70s at 3:00 pm in West Yellowstone.



Why do we call it an adventure? It’s the little things. Like we’re all packed and ready to go, turn the key on and dead silence. Oh nice…first check the batteries. When the cover was lifted my first though was….is there water in the batteries? Before that I checked that I shook all the battery connections. What’s this? Four posts had loose connections….a little tightening and BAM, Gus starts up ‘puuurfectly’. The connections must have been loosened from the travel. Oh well, and thanks dear God, we’re on our way.



Road work delays, beautiful landscapes, and then we come to the ‘Craters of the Moon’ National Park. As we’d toured this before, and the temps were getting very hot, we decided to travel onward and just take lots of photos from Gus as we drove by the park.



Originally we’d planned on stopping somewhere between Mt Home and Yellowstone for the night, but by the time we reached Rexburg, Idaho, the thought of spending the afternoon and night in the heat seemed unbearable. When we fueled up in Rexburg the temperature was over 100F. We have air-conditioning in Gus, but running it on a generator is both really noisy for others around us and it sucks up gas like it was water on arid land. So we decided to go all the way to West Yellowstone, the mountains (6,667’ elev.) and some cooler temperatures.



The whole trip totaled seven hours, with very limited traffic. We arrived in West Yellowstone around 4:00pm to temperatures in the mid 70's (sigh...wonderful) and set up camp (Gus) for the next part of our adventure. Long drive and we need a break so what did we do….we load the cameras into the Red Rocket and headed for the park (yes, photography is an addiction!).



We travelled up the Madison River and at first we saw nothing, then when we turned to come back, we saw bison, elk, and osprey. We actually saw an osprey hit the water (no fish) and return to a tree on the other side of the river. We stopped, and of course so did about 30 others, but, not having the patience of a photographer who is hoping for a great shot, they all left save for one other car. It was then that the osprey dove again, to come up with a large (12-16 inches) fish. Then, with some difficulty, it managed to fly off down stream. It was dusk, didn’t get my great shot of the bird, but did capture the explosion of water when it hit the river…oh well, I’ll try again another time.



The inset shot not only shows the always present fisherperson on the Madison River, a bison in the background, but if you look close you’ll notice a lot of tiny white specks in the image….there was a huge bug hatch and the camera picked it up too.



We finally got back to Gus, once again at dark-thirty, after driving for about 11 hours…. yes we do get a little carried away sometimes. We ate dinner and crashed. The adventure continues…



To see more of 'The Great Adventure 2009' images click HERE