The plan for the day was to go to Yellowstone and stay at Hardy Campground. When we woke up in the morning we decided that we had not done Little Big Horn Justice so we decided to detour there on the way out of town.
We checked out the movie the Park Service has which is well done in trying to present the story from both sides. Then after the movie there was a Ranger talk which was also excellent. We ended the visit with a walk up to the last stand site. Our little detour cost us half a day and it was almost noon before we took off for Yellowstone.
We busted along as fast as we could but it was not as fast as we would have liked as there was a considerable wind blowing the entire way which meant we were moving along considerably slower than the 80mph posted speed limit.
We finally arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs around 3:30 pm, only to see that Hardy Campground had closed that day for the season. With a 60% of 1 to 3’ of snow forecast we had a choice of staying at Mammoth Hot Springs and risking the park service closing the road across the park for part of the day, or heading for West Yellowstone and staying in a commercial campground. We opted for caution and headed over to West Yellowstone.
