We have a two-screen drive-in here in Fort Collins (northern Colorado, about 40 miles south of Cheyenne, WYO). The cool thing about it is that although they still have the old speakers-on-a-post, they broadcast the sound track for each screen on a low power FM frequency so that you can listen with your car stereo. In my case, I've backed a pickup into the parking spot, put a pair of 2x12's across the bed by the cab to form a seat and put camp chairs in the end of the bed toward the tailgate. It makes 2-tiered seating. The kids can fort up against the cab on the 2x12 platform with blankies and pillows, and the grownups can sit in comfort in the camp chairs. We bring a boom box with fresh batteries, sit it on the cab and tune it to the FM frequency. My daughters went to The Dark Knight and another movie two nights ago...they're big enough to drive themselves now, so the 2x12's have been retired (note: if you do this, put a cleat under each end of the 2x12 so they can't slide off the sides of the pickup bed...)
About Yellowstone - you may recall they had huge forest fires in that region in 1988; those fires burned about one-third of the region that year. We only live a day's drive from there, and we have visited a couple of times since the fires. A lot of the dead and downed trees near the road are due to the fire. However, since then, the pine bark beetles have become a problem throughout the entire west. I don't doubt that many of the old trees have been killed by them. My view is that the pine bark beetle is part of a cyclic phenomenon and we'll eventually realize that we need to ride it out and let nature restore the forests over (a lot of) time.
