West Yellowstone

 


Soo, our former roomie, Marie, told us about a little playhouse in West Yellowstone.

For clarification, West Yellowstone (WYS) is the name of the town outside of the West entrance/exit.








A group of college students throughout the US gather in WYS to learn 3 new plays and they perform all summer to September 3 when they leave to go back to college. And it's been a tradition for just short of 50 years.









This year's plays were Singing In The Rain, Mary Poppins, and 7 Brides For 7 Brothers. We have a limited amount of days where no one is on our campus so that we could go and spend the night and last Friday/Saturday were 2 of those days.

We drove thru the smoke and arrived in time to walk around the little town and eat dinner. Then we walked around to the different shops and finished in time to get in line for our seats at the Playmill. Our play was 7 Brides, which I've seen on tv but Bob has not.

It's not a large performing arts theatre with just a little over 200 seats, but the kids did a great job and it was very entertaining.

In fact, we enjoyed it so much we made reservations for next Saturday to go to the matinee and see Singing In The Rain, our all time favorite movie.

Also in town, is a former Union Pacific RR station converted into a museum of former transportation vehicles used in YS.

We saw the original blue prints for the building, and a complete serving of the dishes used on the trains. It was well worth the $5 admission cost.





This was the original 'yellow bus' a person would hire to take them around the park. It was pulled by horses and the journey took 5 days/nights to make. As tough as some of the paved roads are today, I can't imagine such a trip being fun...but I bet it was quite the adventure!

Supplies had to be brought in. These two wagons are hooked together, were piled high and pulled by horses. I guess this is the precursor for the double semi-trucks we see on the roads today.



















How cool is it that we not only have a mountain with our last name, but there was a wagon also, that was used to carry people to the top of (dare I say it...) our mountain!





Would this not be fun to drive around town in? Unless it's raining, cold, or hot of course :)










And here's main street of WYS. We were impressed by how wide the streets are. All of the side and back streets have ample room to move around on and plenty of parking. At night, I suppose due to the Playmill, the town comes to life and was quite crowded.

No miles hiked but we played some Pokémon and picked up balls at several PokeStops.

Fire update: South entrance from Tetons closed today due to fire and smoke. As for us on the northern end, the winds came in from the north and carried the smoke away for today. Beautiful, pleasant day in north YS!