Yellowstone

We had an eventful trip from Medora. Upon inspection the tow dolly's tires appeared bald on either side of a perfectly fine 1.5" treas pattern in the middle and the tread on the sides. Hmmm. After worrying about it all the way to Billings I found a tire center that inspected them and pronounced them serviceable with a "normal" wear patter for a bias ply tire. REALLY!!! BALD IS NORMAL!! Its been some years since I've had bias ply tires but I never remember them looking like that. $216 later we had two brand new radial beauties I hope I won't be worrying about any time soon. We went through Bozeman and south on 191 and after a few miles we saw a lighted sign that read, "expect delays of 30-40 minutes on rt 191 mile marker 54-56. Hmmm. We were at mile marker 85 and West Yellowstone was at mile marker "0". Not good. We started with a 525 mile trip and a one hour delay for the tires before seeing this warning. We arrived at the "delay" to find the road had been reduced to a one lane mud track. Very messy. Our luck was good and we drove up to the back of the line just in time to be the last one they let through. A rock slide had taken out the road completely for over 1000 feet. The crews were working feverishly to regrade the debris into a new road foundation. Most of what had been blacking the roadway had been moved aside. Something like this really gives you a sense of how large the scale of things are here. Looking up is a steep slope that goes on for over 1500 feet. Big stuff compared with Calvert Cliffs.
We went to the park today and hung out at the Yellowstone Inn at Old Faithful. I injured my knee getting out of bed the other day and had to buy a brace in Medora. Not going all that well really but it's getting somewhat better. I'm hoping for the best.
The eruption of Old Faithful proved to be as advertised and we ended up in the pub watching the local birds catching something or the other from the courtyard to feed to their young.
The trip in and out of the park was also eventful. We saw one elk and 500-1000 buffalo. They are everywhere including ambling up the only road in the entire zip code. Naturally traffic was stopped. That coupled with the folks in front of you that have to stop in the middle of the road if they THINK they MIGHT have seen anything. Ah well, that's driving through our National Parks:)