I visited the park just after you, entering on September 12th and staying for three nights. It was pretty uneventful. I tried to reach the post-peak season and the start of the cool weather season. I hit the end of the wildfire smoke exactly, but if this is the off-peak season I would hate to see the crowded season. Canyon Village had historic photos of a road with a traffic jam and parked cars on the shoulder, implying that things have improved since then. But I saw the same thing at Norris Geyser just a few minutes later. The only improvement they have made was turning the roads around and through Old Faithful into a freeway with a trumpet interchange.
I saw elk and bison, and got to visit geysers early in cold mornings when the steam was especially great. The one thing I didn't do right was book early enough to get cabins. All that were available on two of the nights were campgrounds in Grand Teton, and $500 for one night at Old Faithful Inn in the middle. I had figured I could sleep in the back of my Honda CR-V with an air mattress, but I wasn't sure if sleeping in such a small car was acceptable practice in campgrounds. I soon found out it was acceptable, because my first camp night was in a "walk-in" site set back a ways from the parking spot. next to me was someone else who was sleeping in his car, but he planned ahead and blocked out the windows and had a black cloth that allowed for air exchange. Now I had to be especially careful not to make noise.
At least on the second camp night I was at my own pull-thru camp site. There I could park so the front of the car was lower down than the back, which makes sleeping with my head at the back of the car so much more comfortable. The previous night I tried sleeping with my feet at the back, but they became numb being shoved against the hatchback that I had to switch back. On the second night my car's auto-lock system acted strange. Maybe I stepped on my key fob, but I don't know why it did it twice. A few seconds after I closed the door, the lights came back on. And when they faded out, all the locks activated, and the blinking orange light in the dash flashed indicating that the alarm system is on. Oops. I don't want to forget about that, or I would set off the alarm when I opened a door from the inside. So I unlocked the doors with the fob, which is the only way to keep the alarm from sounding when this happens. But then it did it again, with the lights coming on again and the alarm setting. So then I unlocked it one more time, then opened and closed a rear door. That seemed to break the cycle. Maybe someone who understands 2014 Honda CR-Vs can explain what is going on.
I first visited Yellowstone with the family in 1987, and I modeled this vacation on that one to a large extent. On the way back home I stayed at the Missoula Broadway Inn because that's where my family stayed on the way to and from the park. I was working at McDonald's at the time, and I noticed that there was a McDonald's under construction right by the hotel. On the way out, it was open, and I could walk through and see where everything was going to go. One week later they had already installed the doors and lights. I heard later that that was Missoula's first McDonald's, and even in 1987 they were still finding cities to expand into. I went back to that location on this trip, in a building that looks like it was rebuilt from the one I saw earlier. The person about to serve me my diet Coke wasn't sure what drink it was, so she took the lid off, put her nose down to it and sniffed. Okay, so that happened. Good help is so hard to find.
