Yellowstone Trip - Part 7 - West Yellowstone to Helena, Montana - 370 km

Thanks to Dale's internal and external alarm clocks, we got up really, really early this morning. How early? It was so cold that there was a build up of frost on my seat. How cold? It was 2°C. when we carefully made our way to McDonald's for our breakfast.

Fuelled by an Egg McMuffin, we carefully set out for the Prismatic Lake. It was really cold. I mean, really cold. I could swear that there was black ice on the road and we kept pulling over to let cars past because we were going so slow. It was a white knuckled, thigh clenching ride.

We finally arrived at the Prismatic Lake and, surprise, it wasn't packed! That's because it was shrouded in clouds. In fact, we had hit thick fog two or three kilometres from the lake and it was pea soup until we arrived at the parking lot.

We wandered around and then sat for close to an hour as the fog slowly lifted. Unfortunately, even when it had finally lifted, there was still fog coming from the lake as there was such a temperature differential between the water in the lake and the air temperature. We did, however, see a hint of colours in that mist.

When we left, an hour later, the air, and the road, had both warmed up considerably. A biker couple that we met in McDonald's during breakfast suggested going through Bozeman rather than the park - in fact, there were reports of snowfall in one of the passes north of the park!

We took highway 181 which was a bit rough to start. As we approached Big Sky, we say a forest fire, including the helicopters battling it, from the highway.

After Big Sky, the road improved immensely with good twists and turns. This was our favourite part of the day. At Bozeman, we went on Interstate 90 which very windy - as in the wind was trying to blow us off the highway - and the traffic moved rather fast. During one part where there was construction, and there was just one lane each way, a motorhome decided to tailgate me which was frustrating as I had nowhere to go! So rude!

Our route from West Yellowstone to Helena

Finally, we got off the interstate and ended up on the quieter 287 and 12 to Helena.

Near our bed for the night, the lovely Super 8 in Helena (which had the same horrid breakfast the next day), we found a highly rated Mexican restaurant. We were extremely excited! We walked there and, of course, it was closed for renovations. We ended up going to Albertson's and I bought some baked chicken and a bottle of wine and ended back at the room watching 'Man vs Food' (Food won everytime!).