Friday, August 1st
Nora called last night and we got together for breakfast and a nice girls morning/afternoon. It was great to see her and get caught up with each other. If we stay here longer, we will get together again.
The rest of the day we just hung out and then relaxed by the campfire. We had a little visitor:
Looks like he was getting lots of scraps somewhere:
What a hoot!
Saturday, 2nd
We headed to downtown West Yellowstone for this morning’s car show parade. Our first stop was the display area and we got so involved with the cool looking cars that we missed the street parade. But the neat thing was we were right at the area where they come into the park – 
… so we got to see them all.
I took lots of pictures – here are a “few” of my favorites:
WOW!! These folks put a lot of work into their vehicles. Great show!
From the park we walked thru the town. West Yellowstone main street downtown is your typical touristy street with shops but we had some fun anyway.
Some pictures downtown:
Funny T-Shirts:
They also have many of their trash cans painted – really nice looking:
Also cool painted buffalo all over too:
This is one of the historic buildings – Eagle’s Store. The Eagles were one of the town’s three founding families and opened the store in 1908. This building was actually rebuilt in 1927 and replaced two previous Eagle’s stores at this same location. Their descendants still operate the store today.
We stopped at one of the little restaurants for lunch and had a great buffalo burger. YUM!
Our next stop was the Yellowstone Historic Center Museum:
Here is the museum. It was the Union Pacific Depot and is the oldest building still standing in West Yellowstone. It was built in 1909 to receive the visitors arriving on the Oregon Short Line’s “Yellowstone Special”.
Such a beautiful depot. There were displays and information on the history of West Yellowstone which included the trains, the first tourists, the fires, the big earthquake, Yellowstone Park and more.
There were four movies that we saw. The first one was on the Yellowstone fires of 1988 – actual footage. WOW!
The areas in orange are the areas that were on fire:
There was a great movie on the 1959 Earthquake in the Madison River Canyon. Only a few displays because there is a visitor center nearby. We did pick up an auto tour brochure to do that tour.
Another section was on traveling in the winter, including a movie on the benefits of the snowmobile:
Check out the size of this grizzly (that is the one on the left 
):
The transportation area:
There was another movie on the Montana Centennial Train in the 1960’s. This is one of the panels from that train:
The other side of the train station:
The Dining Lodge:
I am not sure if the Lodge is normally open to the public. There was a sign on the door about a private party and I went up to look in the door windows. As they came out, I asked about going inside to take pictures. No problem, they were setting up for a wedding but no one had arrived yet.
Isn’t this beautiful:
WOW! Can you imagine coming in on the train and having dinner here?
The street side of the Dining Lodge:
What a nice day and such a neat little town.
Tomorrow we are checking out the Earthquake Area so stay tuned and enjoy today.
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