Billings MT (22) to West Yellowstone MT (23 - under 35)

Oh Homer!!!! Our trip from Billings was easy driving and I planned to turn off the I90 near a place called Livingston and head south for our stay in West Yellowstone. Sounds easy and looked fine on the Trailer Life Directory Campground Navigator (TLDCN) I’m using for our trip. As it turned out, that was to be a poor plan anyway, however Homer made it worse.

When you set a destination in the Tom Tom (Homer), regardless of the distance to be travelled it provides an overview, a summary of the planned route for you to accept. The problem one faces is the greater the distance, today was about 400km, the less detail you can see in the small screen.

I knew the terrain was to be quite mountainous because the TLDCN provides enormous detail – we were to start the day in Billings at an elevation of 3114’, travel into the Yellowstone National Park area which averaged at about 6500’, but prior to getting there, we had to traverse a range peaking at around 7500’.

No real problems perceived so I keyed in the destination to Homer and accepted….OK, I know, it’s my fault for accepting his suggested route – just trying to find a scapegoat!!

Apparently the screen showed us going through Cooke City, a more direct route than I had planned. That in itself was fine until we came, unexpectedly to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

Still no real problem, despite the fact that I chose the employees lane (it seemed wider) for me to enter. It caused the booth attendant to leave her post, walk to us and tell us we were in the wrong lane – my apologies were accepted, I showed our annual National Parks Pass and we headed on into the parklands.

It’s an absolutely beautiful area, but more about the Park in the next blog. I couldn’t really enjoy the views as the rig was beginning to become a handful as the road was narrowing and becoming quite windy in places.

As we neared Mammoth Hot Springs on the northwest corner, the road became so narrow and twisty that, being 58’ long caused the rig to be cutting corners – not a huge problem if it was all one way traffic. But it wasn’t, and to compound the problem, there were huge drops on one side of the road and a cliff-face virtually on the other. I needed to swing wide to prevent the side of the van being either being scraped against the rock-face or against the Armco railing preventing us from taking a plunge into the abyss!

My hands seemed to be squeezing the steering wheel so hard I’m sure my knuckles were white. I said (calmly of course…not) get some photos. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Grace was holding the camera but didn’t respond or even acknowledge my request. Again and again I said “take some photos”, nothing.

BREAKING NEWS: we got some photos near the area where it wasn't too scary, now shown within this blog. From these photos, we hope you can imagine how frightening the really narrow sections were!

Meryla was also sitting beside the window and I knew she had a camera so I asked her to make sure she got some shots. At least Meryla replied…..NO, I’m scared of heights!!” I think Homer’s language is about the only thing I could print – “Doh!!”

Exciting is not a word that sprang to mind – fear perhaps - cars and even some other not quite so big RVs were coming in the opposite direction, for the most part, thankfully, crawling past each other with our rear view mirrors almost touching – glimpsing over the edge of the abyss which caused my already white knuckles to be completely devoid of blood.

So, all this happened and there isn’t a photo of the very narrow sections to show. Grace told me later, she was so scared, she wasn’t even breathing. She was literally holding her breath for fear of rocking the car and sending us over the edge.

The road was as bad on the other side of Mammoth Springs as well, but soon straightened out to a quite narrow, but acceptable drive to our destination at West Yellowstone, just outside the western edge of the Park.

I mentioned earlier that my planning through Livingstone was poor as well because that had us entering the Park though the northwest entrance at Mammoth Springs. Either of those two entrances would have caused the same problem.

If I had to do it again, I’d still stay in West Yellowstone because it’s a fantastic little town, but I’d get there by using either Hwy 20 from the south, Hwy 191 from the north or Hwy 287 from the west and leave using one of those Highways.