After arriving in Miles City we hunted for a place to eat. This town apparently rolled up the sidewalks at 7 p.m. and it was now 9:30 p.m., way past our dinner time, and we were hungry. It ended up that McDonald’s was the only place open. We got two meal-deals, two iced teas, and headed to our room. As our heads hit the pillow, we were out like a light.

In the morning, we asked about a place for breakfast.

“Oh, yeah, sure! Just down the street. You can’t miss it.”

So, we headed off in the direction indicated by the hotel concierge. We walked. And we walked. And we walked. And we wondered if we got the directions wrong. We wondered how much farther. We wondered if we should go back and get the car. There was no restaurant in sight. We asked someone on the street.

“Oh, yeah, sure! Just in the next block. You can’t miss it.”

Finally, about a mile from our point of origin, we found this little café tucked away in an old strip mall building. The food hit the spot.

When we got back to our room, we consulted our “trusty” GPS. It would take at least three hours to reach our destination. So, we trudged off, hoping to arrive sometime around noon.

I couldn’t wait. This was going to be a new experience. We had been to Yellowstone before, but the accommodations in the park and nearby were so exorbitant, we decided to stay in a cabin about 35 minutes away from the north entrance. From the pictures, it looked like a peaceful little cabin close to a rippling mountain stream. I could just picture ourselves sitting on the porch watching the water splashing over rocks lulling all tension out of our bodies. We rode on with high hopes.

As we pulled into the town, we looked down each street wondering if that was the turnoff to the cabin. No, not that one. The next? No. The next? No. Finally we reached the turnoff and followed the direction of the GPS.

We drove to the edge of town and to the edge of paved roads. We looked ahead. Gravel and ruts paved our way. We crept along carefully to avoid a deep drop off on the right side of the road. The houses on the left side looked more and more rustic as we moved along.

Finally, we got to the address on our reservation. We made a V-turn into a gravel driveway and pulled up to a ramshackle of a house hidden by weeds and overgrown brush. We made our way to the front door wiping away cobwebs as we went.

The inside was clean, although more derelict than we were used to even on our camping adventures. But, we were here to see to Yellowstone. We were not going to be spending much time in this place.

Oh, yes, and the clear, mountain stream was on the other side of the gravel, rutted road, at the bottom of the steep 20′ incline. You could make it out if you swiped away tall reeds and brush hiding the view.

We unloaded and headed off for Yellowstone, where another surprise awaited. Many of the main roads in the park were in some stage of repair. Interminable lines of cars were waiting for their turn to pass the construction site. One direction got the green light, and then the other direction got the green light, and back and forth until it was our turn to pass. We kept looking for a good place to stop to do the tourist thing – see the sights, but every sight was packed with cars, trucks, and RVs. Before we knew it, we were on the other side of the park, without having stopped even once.  

By this time, it was dinner time. We exited the park to get some dinner and contemplate what we were going to do next. We didn’t want to go through the park again and face all that traffic again, but our accommodations were on the other side of the park. We could drive around the park, but there was no simple road around.  We could just stay where we were and find a place nearby to check-in for the night. It was getting dusk. We finally decided to go through the park again.

The second time through was actually very quiet and peaceful. Most of the tourists had left and we could drive up to the sights we only saw through the crowds before. Only problem, now we didn’t have the time if we wanted to get back to the cabin in decent time. The construction still slowed us down, but this time it seemed to go faster. We finally made it back to our town around 10:30 p.m.

Now it was dark. Now we had to make our way up the narrow, rutted road to our cabin in the dark. There was no guardrail on the side of the drop-off. We inched along trying to find the house that was “ours”. The house numbers disappeared in the dark.

We drove into one driveway we thought was ours but turned out not to be. We had to back out of the driveway facing northeast and we wanted to go south. We backed up, pulled in, backed up, and pulled in again and again trying to avoid the steep unprotected embankment on the other side of the narrow, one-lane road. Finally, with the car pointed in the right direction we headed “home”.

In the morning, we decided to just pack up and leave. We had booked this cabin for three nights. One of those nights had already been taken by our unplanned stay in Miles City. We had one more night, but we decided we had enough.

We headed out of town toward West Yellowstone, another town on the (you guessed it) west side of Yellowstone. As we were driving in that direction, we noticed our navigation screen was blank, and the radio was dead. What was going on here? Try as we might, we could not get anything to work that would give us access to the outside world or to show us where we were. The only thing working was the engine of the car.

I was beginning to feel like we were in the Twilight Zone. Some strange phenomenon was messing with us and there was no way out. I was beginning to hear eerie music in my head as we sped along in an abyss. We decided we would stop for help in West Yellowstone.

As we drove into the town, searching for places that might be able to give us some answers, we stopped in one parking lot to regroup to decide what to do. Just then, the radio flickered on. The navigation system lit up. We were good to go. And go is what we did! So glad to kick the dust of Wyoming off our shoes. Apparently, there was no internet coverage in that pocket of space we passed through that morning. We headed west to our next destination, Park City, Utah.

Our stay in Park City was uneventful compared to the last three days. It was exciting, though, as we spent time with our son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, white-water rafting, my husband rescuing our granddaughter out of the white-water rapids, riding on the T-bars of the Olympic ski slopes, and eating to our heart’s content.

The 13-hour drive home was a breeze compared to what we had been through. We got home and kissed the ground of good ol’ LaVista. Home sweet home! Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home!