Yellowstone Christmas - Day 7
Check out of the great western, and leave my blue fleece behind. :( Head off through reasonably heavy snow, (but no/low winds) up to bridger bowl. Scott goes to try and get demo skis, but ends up returning with some generic rentals while I pick us up our $36 lift tickets.
We head off up the lift with Bob Johnston, Mountain Host and our free tour guide for the morning. Very pleasant company, over 72, very capable skiier, and absolute powder hound. Bridger it turns out is run as a non-profit, which is very cool. Bridger also has fantastic terrain, very varied, much more interesting than a series of open swathes cut through trees. Reminded me a lot of brighton.
Scott was hating his skis, and vetoed further skiing that afternoon by returning his skis. Have to say I was a bit dissappointed with that, but not an awful lot I could do about it. Such lovely terrain though. I also forgot to get a sticker for the board.
Decide that we may as well head out homewards now then, so we just hit the road. Given the snow conditions, we feel that returning down 191 over island park may be a rather foolish idea, so we take the interstate west to Butte. The road is fairly horrible, but does go through some nice scenery and over the divide again. Lunch in "Historic Uptown Butte" at Northwest Noodles and Wraps, which is actually very tasty. (And also one of the few things open at 3pm on boxing day)
Back on the road again! (There is lots of "back on the road again", we did after all, cover about 2500 miles) I drive off, getting some great road for quite a ways, making 90mph for nearly an hour, but we return to snow country again. I pass off to Scott at the border of Montana and Idaho, and start napping. From here on out, the road just gets worse and worse. We lose track of how many accidents we see. Mostly just people gone off the road, but a couple of more serious ones as well.
Pull into Pocatello again. We're not going to make the mistake of getting into a place too late for dinner again. This time we're at the red lion. About $15 more expensive, which gets us an alarm clock, wireless access, and a pool and hottub. Pretty poor water pressure though. Probably wouldn't bother paying the extra for what we got again.
Go downstairs to get dinner in the attached restaraunt, but after the complications trying to order, "We've got no steak, and no pasta" and "ale? right right, ale." We skip out and head back to the italian place downtown that we had just missed the kitchen closing the week before. The manager recognises us, and welcomes us back again. A beer or two, a lovely pasta dinner, tasty garlic bread, and a chat with Gwen about mormons, big cities, small cities and driving later, we head back to the hotel. Watch a bit of telly, then it's bed. Nothing but driving left for us.