Yellowstone Road Trip – Day 3
For breakfast, Ryan had the freeze-dried granola cereal with raspberries. I had my vegan protein shake. After clean-up, I noticed a bird in a tree and thought to grab my long lens for my camera. By the time I got the lens on the camera, the bird was no longer in the tree. But, I happened to look up and saw the bird sitting directly above me on an electrical line. It was a young cedar waxwing and it stayed there for at least 15 minutes while I happily snapped away.
I had picked up a rack card from the visitor’s center in Coeur d’Alene for a silver mining tour in Wallace, so I made plans to stop there on our way to our next campsite. On the way there, I stopped at a gas station to pick up cold drinks and check my oil (my car had started to burn oil faster than before). I was good for now, but my GPS display decided to go on the fritz, so I was sitting in the hot car, trying to get a signal for the GPS on my cell phone to work and it was taking some time. A nice, older man walked over and asked if I was having car trouble. Nice to know there are still kind people left in this world!
At Wallace, I bought tickets for the Sierre Silver Mind Tour. It was inexpensive and included a tour around town by an old trolley. At the silver mine, we put on hard hats and entered. I’m claustrophbic, so wasn’t sure how I’d react to being underground. But, it was well lit, tall enough for me to stand, and I was ok. The old mine employee, who was one of the equipment maintenance men, showed us tools used, etc. It was pretty informative and I reaffirmed that I could never do that job!
After the tour, we walked a few blocks and had lunch at the Red Light, which boasts it’s own space ship in their parking lot.
After getting to Beavertail Hill State Park, we quickly set up camp. The site was HUGE! We could have easily set up four large tents and still have room.
Since it was already evening, I made dinner from our freeze-dried stash again. This time it was Chili Mac and green beans. Again, really tasty!
Another camper, who was using one of the teepees, had his guitar and entertained the other campers at the amphitheater for about an hour. He had two boys and two girls, but the youngest, Alice, was quite a pistol. After her dad was done signing a song, she’d run out and put her hands to her cheeks and say “my turn!”.
