When we departed Craters of the Moon, we headed for the penultimate major feature of our trip: the famous Yellowstone National Park.  Our time at Craters pushed back our schedule enough that we arrived at Yellowstone after dark, so we drove to our cabin in the middle of the park without being able to appreciate the scenery because, you know, we couldn’t really see it.  That was probably good, though, as I’m not sure we would have fully appreciated it at that point: not only were we worn out from a day of National Parking and driving, but we were also somewhat exasperated because our GPS tried to lead us down a road that didn’t exist.  It told us to turn left, but we couldn’t figure out where to turn because all we saw was a rather abrupt slope that led directly into Lake Yellowstone, which definitely isn’t a road.  After a few minutes of confusion we did manage to find the road we needed, and before long we stumbled into our cabin quite ready not to be awake.

(We did investigate the curious discrepancy the next day, and we discovered the GPS wasn’t trying to kill us; rather, it was just out of date.  There used to be a road where it kept telling us to turn, but it had been closed.)

When we began exploring the park under a brilliant blue sky the next day, we saw what we’d been missing during our late-night drive.  Essentially, we’d been missing one of the most beautiful places on earth.  Not far from the irksome non-existent road was this emphatically non-irksome Lake Yellowstone view that prompted us to stop the car so we could let our jaws drop without causing an accident:

Actually, we made two or three brief stops to ogle the lake and its surroundings, but we did move on without much delay.  And if you come back for the next post, you’ll see where we ended up next.  (I’d include the next destination in this post, but like nearly everything we saw in Yellowstone, it deserves its own post.)