Day 1 in Yellowstone included a 10pm drive to the south entrance of Yellowstone. Our flight landed on time, however Alamo's computer system was down and they could not look up our rental car reservation. That compounded by the fact that the "airport rental location" is 11 miles from the airport. Eleven!!! They had also given away almost all their vehicles, except minivans...after some discussion we ended up w the Expedition that the workers use. Needless to say, I'm not happy w Alamo and won't be using their services again. A minor hiccup... And we set off for our two hour drive to Yellowstone Lake Hotel. We did NOT know that the road was closed due to wild fires. Soooo when we were 30 miles from our hotel in the park, the road was closed and barricaded. This was around midnight. There were no rangers or really any way for us to communicate with anyone because there is no cell phone service in that part of the park. So we drove back an hour and a half to Jackson and discovered we now had a 6 hr drive to the West park entrance. Andddd that's how we ended up staying at Bates' Motel... Aka the painted buffalo inn. Which was about the only place in Jackson with vacancy. Cheers to a memorable first night!
