Day 6 we were up at 4:30am and excited to be going on our sunrise tour. We had no idea what to expect except that we were supposed to be looking for animals. Gary was hoping to get to see a Moose. We had yet to find one. We had found tons of Bison, a momma Grizzly and several Elk. We were not expecting her to ask us if we wanted to see a wolf when she picked us up. I hadn't even thought much about a wolf. The GyPsy app did give us the history of wolves in the park which was really interesting, but he had also said they were hard to be seen. Anyway, this young lady had moved to Yellowstone from Alaska and her main study was the wolves! She knew right where a den was at and took us there. It was really cool! However, we could only see them from her high power scopes. The den was was far up on the mountain. We got to see several momma wolves, 2 babies and we even watched a wolf eat a baby bison while the momma bison tried to run the wolf off. That was sad to watch, but I know that's the way nature works. How many of you have seen a real wolf?? It was really cool and man she knew a lot about wolves! She also took us to see a Grizzly, more bison, elk and we hunted and hunted a moose, but didn't find one. Our tour ended at lunch. Here are a few pictures:
Gary at Silver Gate... literally like back in time!
This is where you could sit in front of the store and use the internet. They had a nice fire in the evenings. As you can see there is still snow on top of the mountain. I really enjoyed no internet and TV. I know my husband LOVES the TV so I understood how he didn't like that we had no TVs where we stayed, but I was truly shocked he was also mad about the internet. I would of never thought he would not like that. However, he loves to watch is ring app and watch is animals at home and make sure all is ok at home 24/7. Even though my daughter was checking things for us, he still wanted to see it constantly. 😏
Looking through the scopes. I have some footage of the wolves that our tour guide sent me. I've got to edit it and then I'll add it here.
Gary wanted a nap after our tour. I was shocked. He makes fun of anyone that mentions a nap! and he's always up early so I was shocked that he slept for 2 1/2 hours! I slept a little and then I sat waiting for him to wake up. I asked him if he wanted to drive back in the park and look for animals at dusk or if he wanted to make the drive to Red Lodge, Montana via the Bear Tooth pass. We had a couple of friends recommend it if we had time on our trip. He said we should go on to Red Lodge since we had time. It was a 63 mile drive from Silver Gate, but is all winding around the mountains so it takes literally 2 hours to get there. BUT all was it worth it! It was by far the prettiest scenery we had seen! Yes, Yellowstone is beautiful, but this drive was amazing. Snow was everywhere. Even right up close to the road! We stopped and took several pictures and we also saw mountain goats on the side of the mountain. They were beautiful. When we finally got to the town we were amazed. It was like we were back in Hattiesburg! Restaurants and shops for days! Gary was so excited. We had a nice dinner and a cute little place. It was so nice once again to get to go inside and sit down. Here are some pictures (I have a million pics!) from our drive:
Gary really enjoyed the snow!
That's frozen water down in the mountain!
Now what we didn't realize was the Beartooth Pass closed at 7pm Monday - Thursday till 7am! So guess what... we couldn't go back the way we had come. Gary as so mad. Neither of us had noticed a sign (ONE SIGN!) that let you know that. There was no warning signs along the road. If you missed that one sign, well you didn't know it until you drive back half way up the mountain and came to the road closure! AND that was us! Well me since I was doing all the driving. So I had to turn around and drive a hour back down to Red Lodge to figure out how we would get back to Silver Gate. There are no turn off roads on the pass once you are on it. It's a straight shot for 63 miles with no turns!! Gary said we would just have to spend the night in Red Lodge. But I was determined we would not. That would totally mess up our plans and besides we had no extra clothes or anything. So I stopped at the first gas station coming into town and got on my maps. I found a route and even went inside to ask the worker at the store. He told me I was right. That during the winter months the beartooth is closed and the route I had found was how locals would get to Silver Gate. It would take us longer to get back... an extra hour.... So by the time we got back to Silver Gate it was almost midnight! I had been driving for 6 hours total that night. I was wore out! There was awful wind the whole time when we went from Red Lodge to Cody and then to Silver Gate. I'm talking the wind was so strong we saw trucks flipped over. It was all I could do to hold on to the steering wheel and pray that we would make it back. We did see this amazing sunset on the mountains. Well, I thought it was amazing. Gary was still so mad he barely looked at it. LOL I tried to get a quick picture from the car. You couldn't open the door or it would fling back and knock you out the wind was so strong.
Before we left Silver Gate we visited Cooke city. Which is only like 2 miles from Silver Gate. It's also an old wild west town. We stopped at the saloon and had a couple of beers and walked around a bit looking for moose! Our tour lady told us they were often spotted there in town. On our way leaving there were a ton of people on the side of the road. By the time we got where we could see..... It was a Moose, but we saw the butt end and then it disappeared into the woods! So no Moose for Gary still! Here are a few pics from Cooke City:
This ended our 2 nights at Silver Gate. I really loved moving around and staying different places. We saw so much!
More to come.... next day we head back in Silver Gate entrance and head to the West Entrance where I will be doing my Yellowstone Half Marathon on Saturday before we fly home on Sunday. 😁
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