8/7

Leaving Glacier. Our coldest day yet! It’s finally consistently feeling like the kind of mountain summer I was expecting. It rained late last night and we had already started packing up, including the awning, so I awoke in a start and scrambled to bring our shoes inside so we wouldn’t have soggy feet in the morning. We are heading back south today hoping to make it to north Yellowstone. Trekking all the way from north to south Montana is a long haul for us but we have reservations at a private campground for one night so we’re not scrambling for a place late in the day.

8/8

We got our laundry done at the private place (minus a load of dry since they had a strict no hanging clothes to dry policy 🙄), and headed south to Yellowstone’s northern entrance. We made a stop in Emigrant for some of the best breakfast burritos, coffee, and pastries to go. If you’re ever in that area we highly recommend Wild Flour Bakery and Cafe, if we’re ever through there again we will definitely stop for their lunch or dinner menu too.

The drive through the northeastern route in Yellowstone was full of bison traffic jams and we finally saw the big herds vs. the lone handful we’d seen on the southern end of the park three weeks prior. We made a beeline to some high altitude camping just outside of Cooke City and found an ample choice of places in the Soda Butte campground (first time in a month of having this kind of campsite luck!).

Since we were set up before noon, we had time to go back into the park to do a hike. While I’m certainly glad we saw the geothermal side of Yellowstone a few weeks ago, this side seems to be much more our pace with far less traffic and plenty of opportunity for exploration and solitude (with bear spray of course!). Since we’re finally camping above 8k feet it actually cools off at night and we can bust out the layering clothes and campfires.