Today, we got up nice and early to head to Yellowstone National Park so that we could have most of the day to explore the park.  When we walked out of the hotel, it was flurrying just a little and it was starting to stick.

Little did we know it was just a preview of what was to come.  Lots and lots of snow.  We were shocked at how not cleared the roads were.  At some points the snow was scraping the bottom of the car.

We finally made it to Yellowstone!

Only to find out that this park entrance was CLOSED!  They had gotten about 6-8 inches of snow overnight and weren’t sure if they were going to open that entrance at all today.  Really?  It’s Wyoming!  I had no idea that that amount of snow would shut down Yellowstone.  So, we had to turn around and drive back down the unplowed roads.  Somehow, it’s not quite as fun when you don’t have a cool destination.

On the way back, we passed a snow plow heading to the park.  We thought maybe it was heading to the park to clear the way so we pulled over to wait a bit.  When we didn’t see it coming back towards us, we headed back to the park with hopes that the plow went into the park.  Turns out, it did not.  We met the plow coming back towards us so we once again turned around to head out.

On our drive out we stopped at a place where we had seen buffalo on the way to the park.  We didn’t see the buffalo there anymore, but we did see their tracks.

We continued our drive out and Scott spotted the buffalo in the field.

Scott found out that the other entrances to the park were opened and that if we drove right there without stopping for a lot we would be able to see Old Faithful and the Prismatic Pool before dark.  We drove for what seemed like forever and made it to a different entrance.  When we got there, we found out that they eventually opened the entrance that we originally went to.  Ugh. Really?!  Moral of the story is that if there is bad weather don’t go early.  It takes the park a while to get their act together apparently.  Pics from our quick trip on the next post.