Yellowstone National Park in the Winter — a sixteen-day trip to Yellowstone
Start of my trip to Yellowstone
December 2013
In the summer of 2010, I visited Yellowstone National Park, and I thought the place was amazing.
When I left, I decided that I should visit in the winter and see it without the crowds.
In late 2012, early 2013, I started planning a winter visit. What I came up with was a sixteen-day trip to the US. On the trip, I would start in Bozeman, Montana, to go skiing at Big Sky and Bridger Bowl. And then move on to Yellowstone National Park.
The trip started, as usual, with a flight.
Terminal 4, Heathrow, London (LHR)
My Yellowstone trip started from Terminal 4 Heathrow with a 9 hours and 30 minutes flight to Atlanta (ATL). Followed by a 4+ hour flight to Bozeman, Montana.
When I was at Terminal 4, Heathrow, London, I made a little discovery. There is an observation deck that gives a pretty good view of the main runway post-security. The area had tablets that gave flight information on a zoomable map. The deck also has some powerful Nikon binoculars on chains. Plane watching — an excellent way to kill time while waiting to board.
Visiting the observation deck reminded me of trips to Heathrow when I was a kid. Some 40 years ago, you could watch planes at Heathrow from an open observation deck. The deck was open to the public; you didn't have to be a passenger. It was also open to the elements and noise of the planes, as it was on the roof of one of a terminal buildings. I can remember seeing many plane spotters with cameras and binoculars on the deck. They also had radios for listening to the pilots talking to the air traffic controllers. Does that sort of thing still go on?
KL6139 (aka Delta Airlines DL39) from LHR to ATL was a long flight!
It was a long and tedious 9 hour and 30-minute flight.
The flight didn't start well as my seat had a broken headphone jack. Hence I couldn’t watch any movies. The flight was full, so there was no option of a seat change.
This was the second time I had been on a 9+ hour transatlantic flight without entertainment. The last time it was a broken screen.
The flight was supposed to have Wi-Fi. But I was unable to find it.
Later, when I tried to start the 'entertainment' system, I was greeted by a friendly penguin.
It was interesting that Delta Air Lines used Linux (2004 build). Shame about the system crashing twice (and I did see an alarming number of startup errors go by).
Note the seat belt sign in the top righthand corner of the picture is on, and the man is standing on the left. It is now common on flights, particularly with US carriers, that people ignore the seat belt sign and wander around the cabin. When did this start to happen? Haven't they seen the footage of passengers slammed into cabin ceilings?
A few years ago, I was on a flight from the US to the UK, and we had the seat belt sign on for 5 hours straight. People were in desperate need of the toilet, and yet, we had to sit there, and if we tried to get up, we were told to sit back down. I almost peed myself!
I spent my flight to Atlanta dozing. After all, what else was there to do? None of the entertainment worked.
