June 7: Three Forks, Montana

Louisa woke up at 5:30 the next morning and immediately started laughing. Emily poked her head out of her sleeping bag and sleepily asked whether she was being laughed at. Louisa simply pointed at the windshield and Emily popped up immediately. It was completely covered with snow. We decided it was still too early in the morning to deal with a snowstorm in June, and we went back to sleep until 7:30.

When we reawoke, we got out of the car for a few short minutes to wipe off the windshield (funny, we had forgotten to bring a snow scraper) and then hurriedly jumped back in. Just had the park ranger had warned us, it was 28˙F. And still snowing.

Luckily, Yellowstone looked beautiful in the freshly fallen snow. The trees were dressed in white, as were the buffalo. We took a long meandering drive through more of the park, stopping to look at some more interesting geological features. When we arrived at Old Faithful, we found out that the next eruption was predicted to happen at 10:24 ± 10 minutes. We decided to go warm up in the Yellowstone store while we waited. While we were warming ourselves in front of the fire there, we realized that we were the only idiots in the whole park who didn’t think to bring parkas on our June vacation.

We waited for Old Faithful to erupt in sweatshirts, huddled together. When it finally happened we could barely see a thing. Everything in our field of vision was the same color: the snow (which was still falling), the sky, the steam, the plumes of water. It perhaps wasn’t as cool as it could have been on a clear summer day, it definitely was an experience in and of itself.

On our drive out of Yellowstone we saw a grey wolf, which made Emily’s life, as well as many more buffalo and deer. We would even venture to say that the wildlife looked even cooler in the snowstorm. However, even the buffalo looked like they were shivering.

On our way out of the park we entered Montana. We had only a short drive to our friend Maria’s house in Three Forks, and we were happy to see the thermometer rise as we descended out of Yellowstone.

Once in Three Forks, we took a tour of the town with one of its natives. Maria showed us a dead snake, the golf course, the rodeo grounds, the grocery store, the saddlery, the rope swing, and more. Louisa was very excited to go to Headwaters State Park, which marks the head of the Missouri River, and which has an exhibit on Lewis and Clark. We even ran into some of Maria’s friends who were very excited to learn that we were from the East Coast. We pretty much felt like celebrities.

We cooked up a delicious lasagna, complete with lemon zest and cinnamon (Maria’s recipe), for dinner. Then we hit the town, Three Forks style. For an authentic Montana experience, we hung out with Maria’s friends and heard many interesting stories about their town and its inhabitants.

We were very happy to go to bed in real, warm beds when we got back home.