Lake Yellowstone

We were on a mission to get to Lake Village for something to eat after the second freezing cold and wet morning and we were happy just to have sunny skies and dry roads just 5 miles from the camp.  With rain clouds just up ahead and already being wet and cold we turned off as soon as we could to wait out the coming storm.

We wound up at Bay Bridge Marina where a small crowd of people had gathered.  A boat tour of Yellowstone Lake was leaving in 5 mins, SWEET!     Funny that this exact same scenario happened to us back at the Tetons, we wound up on a boat tour of Jenny Lake while spontaneously pulling in to avoid a rain storm.

Heres our boat, captained by a tiny little woman not much taller than Cece who took her job very seriously.  The boat was fully enclosed so we could dry off, thank god! and built to withstand the severe sudden storms that develop without warning on the high alpine lake.  Our tour guide was very funny and informative with lots of stories of old Yellowstone.  I highly recommend going on the lake tour if you visit Yellowstone, it was awesome, and doesnt require any walking 😉

The lake tour was pretty cool, they said just a few weeks earlier  the lake was still frozen over and it was one of the only lakes straddling the continental divide with most of the water flowing out the north side and down the Yellowstone River and some flowing out to the Snake River.  We got to see the remnants of a shipwreck, some Ospreys, and hear the history of many of the buildings surrounding the lake and stories of the many characters of early Yellowstone including a shady entrepreneur who put up a zoo on one of the islands so he could guarantee his passengers would see certain wildlife and milk them out of their money.  The Zoo was in such bad shape that the animals in such poor health that it forever changed the way private businesses can operate inside of the National Parks.

Here’s Lake Yellowstone Hotel, one of the oldest surviving original hotels.  Back in the day this was the ritzy and glamorous hotel, even today its pretty expensive to stay here.  When it was built the road system in the park was pretty much non existent, so the wealthier visitors would arrive at Yellowstone Hotel by boat and that’s why the best face of the hotel is facing the lake where the marina used to be.   This ended up being a terrible place to put a marina as you can see by the battered shore in the below picture and the marina had to be moved to its current location after a particularly bad storm sunk many boats.  Today everyone arrives at the fancy hotel by car and the parking is in the back side just past the dumpsters and trash LOL.

Heres another picture of the hotel from the front after the boat ride.  We were told that it actually has less rooms than it did when it was constructed.  Back in the day each floor would have had communal bathrooms and showers but to keep up with the times they had to tear down every third room and divide it into two bathrooms for the adjoining rooms.