Day 3 Devils Tower to Yellowstone

I woke with the sun, as I do most days when I find myself snuggled into my sleeping bag protected by the walls of my Kelty tent. I zip out to greet the morning and am instantly surprised to find that it had rained sometime during the night. Generally this would have woken me but I was greatly pleased that it did not. I left Angie to her sleep and ventured off to find myself a cup of coffee. However, there seemed to be two problems with coffee procurement. 1.) The camp ground is basically empty and has no services. 2.) The town of Pine Haven is on the other side of the the reservoir...10 miles away. What to do? Well it is 730AM hmmmm well according to my wonderful girl friends sleep schedule; I have plenty of time. I roll into Pine Haven and find some coffee at the local grocery store. As I step inside I am surprised to find a gaggle of woman huddled around the check out counter engaged in a daily dose of gossip. My presence has no affect on stopping or even interrupting the stories that are pouring out of these women. I did not catch all of it but undoubtedly somebody is pregnant and it is very scandalous. I exit the store with an ear to ear grin on my face. I love small towns, you do not get this kind of community in the city.

I returned with coffee we packed up camp and continued on to our first stop. As we approached Devils Tower I got more and more depressed about the possibilities that we would have there. The weather forecast promised severe weather throughout the day and the sky above was doing nothing to disagree with the forecast. Our hopes of a hike and the possibility of some climbing pictures were quickly dashed as the windshield dotted with drops of rain. We were able to get a few pictures but decided to push on and camp on the East side of Yellowstone.
Wow how wrong we were to think that we would be able to set-up outside Yellowstone. There were no campgrounds open within ten miles of the park. Once we got ourselves through the East entrance the campground board alerted us to the fact that there were only three grounds open and at that point two of them were full. Leaving us with one option. Madison. Madison, however is on the West side of Yellowstone and with a top speed of 45 mph it was going to take us another hour to get there. Thankfully we were able to make it there in time to settle in for a good nights sleep and some much needed dinner.