Sept 16th: Hatchet Resort to Yellowstone Old Faithful Inn 127km, 1470m

Today was a day of passes. We had to travel from well outside the east gate of Teton NP through the east gate, bend round to exit the park through the north gate, traverse the national forest region to the Yellowstone south entrance, travel north over the Continental Divide (2435m), run down trough Grant Village and West Thumb, turn west and climb over the Divide back to the Pacific side (2558m), run down past Shoshone Point, then climb back over the Divide through Craig Pass (2518m) to get to Old Faithful Inn. This happened because there was no accommodation available in Grant Village for tonight. We have got a room there tomorrow night so we get to retrace our path over those last two passes and then we have finished crossing the Divide for the rest of this trip.

  

The Old Faithful Inn is, as one might guess, very close to the Old Faithful Geyser and we were able to sit down, along with several hundred other tourists, to watch the 18:20 eruption. The whole area here is full of steaming hot springs and geysers but that is something to explore tomorrow. The Inn is something we had to look at this evening. It is a very large structure, not only horizontally, but vertically. When you walk in to the entrance you can look up 74ft to the top of the roof and the lobby is surrounded by two mezzanine floors. Now this might not sound remarkable but considering that it was built over 100 years ago entirely out of tree trunks and branches I think it is an impressive building.

Old Faithful Lodge