Day 45
9:50 AM MT.

Well, I’m pleased to announce that we are back from the wilderness. You don’t believe me?

We had a great time becoming immersed in Montana politics and driving all over the state seeing the stunning landscape that makes Big Sky Country one of the most wonderful places on earth. We also spent some time discovering the wonders of Yellowstone and The Grand Tetons National Parks. We were virtually disconnected from life for most of this trip. No Internet, no phone and no blogging. All of these are bad, but nothing hit us as hard as the absence of skim milk in the rural mountain west. You just can’t find it. It’s heavy cream or nothing.

Denver, in all it’s glory is chucked full of skim milk, so I am once again a happy man. God Bless good coffee with a dash of Splenda and skim.

We put up our latest episode from Iowa late last night. We got a last minute interview with Mike Stark, the Virginia man who was assaulted by Sen George Allen’s staff after he asked a question to him at a campaign event on Tuesday. Make sure you check it out!

We will overnight in Denver until tomorrow. We’re working on our Montana episode today and tonight we will once again be on the Peter B. Collins Show at 7:30pm EST. You can listen here or wait until tomorrow when we’ll put the clip up on our site.

Five days until Election Day! Who’s nervous?? THIS GUY.

-Peter

Day 43
12:06 PM MT.

We’ve been disconnected for the past two days as we sojourned through the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. But rest assured, we’ve been writing and taking some amazing photos and we’ll be getting them up over the course of the day.

Onward towards Denver.

-Josh

Day 43
8:44 AM MT.

After a memorable night (I’ll get to that shortly) we wake up to frigid -3 degree temperatures smack dab in the middle of Yellowstone National Park.

We had a comfortable night sleep in Dale’s cabin located in central Yellowstone near Lake Village. The cabin is “cozy” (as they say in the real estate business) and we were forced to go without any cell phone reception, internet connection, or any other multimedia for the night! I have to say, it wasn’t easy to be totally detached from the world. We’d spent the previous 43 days constantly connected to blackberries, laptops, and telephones, and last night we found ourselves completely removed from society up in the mountains.

We wake up extremely early to see a bit more of Yellowstone and hit the road for our longest drive of the trip so far. We leave Dale’s cabin and make our way towards the South Entrance to Yellowstone. Before leaving the park, we stop at a few more beautiful sites including Yellowstone Lake. It was almost magical watching the morning mist lift off of the water.

While most of the roads are clear, the remnants of a recent snowstorm remain on the final stretch of road out of the park and it’s a bit treacherous. We creep out of Yellowstone at about 25 MPH but make it safely into Grand Teton National Park where we stop a few more times and then head on towards Denver.

It’s easy to get numb to the amazing natural beauty that exists here in Yellowstone. I am just in awe of everything I’ve seen and so thankful that I’ve had the opportunity to experience all that this great nation has to offer.

Big shout-out to the minivan which has carried us safely and with gusto over almost 10,000 miles now. Here she is in all her glory as we get ready to head towards Denver.

-Matthew

Day 42
6:15 PM MT.

Leaving Livington we take US 89 South towards Yellowstone.

Yellowstone National Park is located in the northeaster corner of Wyoming and was established as the world’s first national park by an act of Congress in 1872. Yellowstone spreads its 2.2 million acres over a vast area of volcanic activity. The product of volcanic eruptions over the past 2 million years, the park is covered with magmatic heat geysers and hot springs, waterfalls, lakes, and rugged mountains.

We meet our friend and host, Dale Reinhart, who is a landscape architect here at the Park, in Mammoth Hot Springs where he sketches out for us our best options during the limited time we have in Yellowstone. For the first time on the trip the mercury really drops and we break out our winter coats and hats for the freezing day to come. Next up is Norris Geyser Basin, an area coverd with springs, geysers, fumaroles, and mudpots.

There are incredible microclimates here that exist in and just barely above the hot water pits and flows. This bright green grass is growing in boiling water in twenty degree weather.

Next we head east through Norris to the Canyon area. I’ll let the photos from Inspiration Point, Lookout Point, and Artists Point speak for themselves. The colors on the canyon walls are a product of the differing chemical concentrations of the hot water springs bursting out of the canyon walls.

It’s icy and getting dark so we head towards Lake to stay in a single room efficiency Dale has lent to us for the night. What a day.

-Josh