Yellowstone NP

Friends,
My country music education continued as we rode from western North Dakota to northwestern Wyoming. Taking in all the scenery across Montana mixed very well with the blues, bluegrass, and country music Baxter showed me. Montana's 'big sky' nickname is apt. It just seems that you can see more sky there. Open spaces and fresh air.
We stopped in Billings to pick up a winter hat for Chris. For those of you who don't know, Cabela's is the 'world's foremost outfitter' of outdoor gear, and they have a retail location there, so I immediately had to call my father and let him know. He was green with envy. Once inside of the arena-sized outdoor store, we found the hat section in just under 15 minutes. All the hats were expensive fleece jobs, so we asked a young woman for help. "I might have something less expensive in camo" she said. Baxter paused: "camo...flauge?" I turned around to laugh, and the saleswoman politely agreed. Awesome. He settled on a hunter's orange hat, and we were off.
We approached Yellowstone in the evening, and decided to eat dinner just outside the park, and pitch our camp in the dark, instead of pitching in twilight and being starved. We devoured the "Best Pizza in the West" (not saying much, i know) and set off for the park. We passed the gates at 8pm, and drove the 6 miles of winding pitch black road to the first camp site. FULL. We drove another 21 miles to the next campsite, also full. When we got out of the car to look around, a park ranger let us know we could camp on the overflow camp space. This was a god send, as we were pretty exhausted, and nerve-wracked from driving almost 30 miles narrowly avoiding deer and elk in the dark. We pitched there, and made some nice friends. Sitting around our campfire drinking camo...flauge Busch beer, we relaxed and turned in for the night.
The next day was full of wildlife, geysers, rock formations, waterfalls, and a horrific boxed salad lunch. (next to some germans) The highlights of the day included watching a herd of buffalo sip water from the opposite bank of the river, seeing a family of elk walking around the hotel, and being awed by Yellowstone's impressive falls.
Instead of paying $120 a night for a hotel room in the park, we spent a grand total of $12 on campsites, and $6.50 between us on rented showers in the very same hotel. We stocked up on hotdogs and firewood, and made it back to camp. It was an excellent but early night of hotdogs and beer under the trees and stars. The temp. at yellowstone drops to about 35 degrees this time of year, so we bundled up and used handwarmers Mrs. Baxter sent us. It was WAY colder the second night in the park.
We rose early, and hit the road for Salt Lake City. Fires in the park made us leave through the north entrance, and miss Old Faithful, but the rest of the park was WELL worth it. We stopped at the Old Saloon (est. 1902) in Emigrant, MT, and enjoyed my second breakfast there in a little over a year. Good times! We gradually warmed up over the course of the drive, and forged on to another state neither of us had been to before.