Olympia to Ellensburg CWU and Yellowstone

We've been gone from home in Olympia a week now so it's time to tell you of our adventures.  First, welcome to new readers Julia and Eleanor!!  Yes, there will be photographs too!  And maybe a quiz???
We left home on Lin's birthday, April 18 and just for insurance that it doesn't snow on our trip, we bought chains for our RV at Les Schwab Tires.

Davidson Building in Ellensburg

Headed over the Cascade mountains to the town of Ellensburg, WA, where our granddaughter Eleanor is in her first year of college at Central Washington University.  Ellensburg is a neat town with lots of old buildings.
We had a nice walking tour of the campus with her, seeing some very interesting architecture in the many buildings where 10,000 students are studying.

Barge Hall

Maryke & Eleanor on CWU Campus -- a display of colored flags to memorize sexual abuse victims 

Lots of beautiful walkways all over the campus

Eleanor in front of the "State Normal School" building

After aChinese dinner together we headed back to our campground on the Yakima River about 5 miles out of Ellensburg. We were surprised to find out that CWU was founded in 1891 (as a "Normal School")!
By 2:20PM on 4/19 we had crossed the panhandle of Idaho and into Montana and the Mountain time zone.  We did a little shopping in Missoula at REI and Walmart and spent a very quiet night parked at Walmart.

At 10:55 AM on 4/20 we crossed the Continental Divide and arrived at 2:25 at West Yellowstone, MT where we have a favorite campground but because 4 of their 6 RV sites were still covered in several feet of snow, we got the last available site for $10 incl. electric but no water (too cold.)

We drove into Yellowstone National Park at 3PM.  The Park opened this west entrance road on April 18 but only to Old Faithful, up to Mammoth then over to Lamar Valley.  2 other entrances will be closed until May 1 or later depending on weather.  We drove along the Madison River and spotted a couple of sandhill cranes as well as elk and lots of bison.

Sandhill Cranes

We got to Old Faithful 10 minutes before the next predicted eruption and it was quite spectacular--better than last year.  There is still lots of snow everywhere in the Park, but Old Faithful's parking lots were mostly closed by huge drifts of snow!

Snowy egret and reflection

Wonderful colors in the hot springs

We got back to West Yellowstone at 7:30PM and splurged on a great pizza from Wild West Pizza, which is always good! It was 20 degrees that night so we were glad we could turn on our little 110VAC heater in the morning to warm us up.

Soda Creek river bed

On Monday 4/21 we got off at 7:15AM to head for Lamar Valley, the wildlife paradise of Yellowstone, but 80 miles of road to get there at 45 MPH max and chances of ice on the road slowed us down. 
We made it finally and were rewarded with pronghorn antelope and a group of 6 bighorn sheep very close along with elk, 2 more sandhill cranes and then heading for the Cooke City, MT entrance, which we'd never been to before, we were amazed at the Alps-like snow covered mountains!  The road is closed after Cooke City until 5/15 with lots of snow in the area still.

The weather forecast was for an even colder night and snow storm so we decided to leave the Park a day earlier than we'd planned and drove out the Gardiner, MT entrance up to Livingstone, MT for the night.

The next morning we had nice long hot showers in the rig, then dumped and went to fill the water tank and was told that the park's well water pump had just died!  So the owner gave us money to go into town to the City Utilities Dept. and fill the tank--pretty expensive at $5 for the 20 gallons that we needed!  Finally off at 9:30 AM for Billings then at 2PM crossed into the state of Wyoming!  At 4:25 PM we arrived in Gillette, the city where last summer, we attended both the FMCA national rally and the Escapade.  We fueled up--diesel is averaging $3.89 a gallon--but fortunately our little Sprinter's Mercedes diesel is averaging 22-23 MPG, so we're going about 550 miles between fill-ups, saving a lot of time!  We solved another problem at Walmart since we've been having wiper blade problems when it rains, so the Walmart automotive department folks found us the right blades and installed them and they really clean the windshield great!  Along with a couple other items we bought for about $25,  we paid our camping fees for another night of "free" camping!  The traditional Walmart parking lot sweeper didn't come by until about 6AM and for a change, he didn't run around our rig in circles for 5 minutes and wake us up!!  Part of the fun!

Wed. the 23rd we left at 8:50AM and the first freeway overhead arch warning sign told us to expect high wind gusts up to 50 MPH--yikes!  And it certainly was very windy most of the day with extremely heavy industrial truck traffic on the 2 lane road south from Gillette because of all the oil and gas production in this area.  Gillette calls itself the "Energy Capital of the U.S." because of its massive open pit coal mining industry plus oil and natural gas wells everywhere.  Finally we arrived in Cheyenne, WY and back on the I-80 freeway with a little less wind. At 3:30PM we crossed into the state of Nebraska and its grassy plains. Unfortunately, the famous sandhill crane migration here along the North Platte River wetlands ended about 2 weeks earlier.  A huge black stormy cloudy mass followed us for maybe 50 miles with more wind and rain; it was worrisome because these thunderstorms sometimes have tornadoes inside them, but not this time!  We arrived in Sidney, NE at 5PM tired with all the wind.  We decided we needed a treat and went to a Chinese Buffet restaurant just off the freeway and near Walmart.  The place was very friendly and had remarkably good food--best ever for a buffet!  We parked again at Walmart but moved a few rows to the middle of the lot because the whole left side of the large parking lot was much like a truck stop with at least 25 big rigs, many with running engines--first time we've ever seen trucks en masse at Walmart!  Anyway we slept well despite wind and rain!  The highlight of the evening was sunset, which looked like the whole western sky was on fire (sorry, no picture!)

Today, April 24 we headed for North Platte, NB at 8:05 AM.  At 10:35 we switched to Central time--lost another hour!  North Platte is a wonderful town to visit if you like railroads or history as the largest railroad classification yard in the world is located here, Buffalo Bill Cody's home and ranch are here along with reenactments of his rodeos and Wild West shows in summer plus this town ran the North Platte Canteen for over 4 years during World War II meeting every troop train stopping here and feeding and entertaining over 6 million soldiers, sailors and airmen total with most of the supplies donated by residents.  The Lincoln County Historical Society Museum has a terrific Canteen exhibit and we stopped by today and despite not opening for the season until May1, they let us in and we bought a book on the Canteen operation and the PBS one hour Canteen documentary that they show in the Museum.  We also drove a little further into the Buffalo Bill Ranch campground that is right next to the North Platte River with a large grassland next to it where sandhill cranes come to feed in the field and rest; but unfortunately nobody home there!  Lunch and back on the road to Elm Creek, NE where there are several other places to see sandhills and even whooping cranes that we'll go past tomorrow.