Another hectic week with bad internet access means that I’m late to the press, again!  So, Alex left us saying goodbye to Marie and Shaun in Spearfish after a night of cock sucking cowboys (ask an Aussie) and burgers. 

We set off from Spearfish and South Dakota for the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, but first we had to sort out Reg’s feet (tyres) so we made a stop in Rapid City at a truck tyre place.  On our trip to the Badlands we had a full-on emergency when one of Reg’s tyres burst as we drove along, we stopped at the side of the road looking at ‘The Wall’ in the park but also in the middle of nowhere.  We had to wait over an hour and a half for Brian from the tow company to arrive and patch up Reg, he still needed to have his tyres replaced and we had to carry the burst tyre inside for the next three days. The tyre people were very efficient, however we had to purchase three Michelin tyres to replace the two which had worn unevenly and the spare which was burst.  We are now running on a complete set of Michelin truck tyres, strangely they weren’t too complimentary about the tyre we bought from Walmart!

With Reg now reshod we set off to Theodore and the town of Medora. We stopped to view the Painted Canyon, very beautiful layered rock wall, more attractive than the similar wall at Badlands and then on to the Medora Campground.  Medora is the location of the main entrance to the south unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) and is also interesting as it was renovated and revived by a man called Harold Schafer, who made his fortune by inventing a bubble bath. 

Medora was originally a stop on the rail road and the nearest railhead to Theodore’s Elkhorn ranch where he recuperated after losing both his wife, in childbirth, and his mother, from TB, on the same day.  He loved the area despite not making a success of his ranch and returned even after becoming president.

Medora muddled along, however it built itself a theatre on a hillside and had a show featuring their most famous resident, Theodore.  It was its history and the theatre that attracted Howard who renovated the Rough Riders Hotel and bought the theatre.  He and his wife instigated an annual musical show and built a newer and bigger theatre, which are still going strong today after 50 years.  We went to the Medora Musical show on Tuesday evening, walking up the steep hill to the entrance with other guests stopping to offer us a lift (we think they thought we must be crazy to walk).  The show’s set is impressive recreating the town with the natural beauty of TRNP as a backdrop. The performance was OK, starting with musical recreation of Teddy’s charge and the introduction of the theme of Heroes.  This was our biggest issue in that all the heroes seemed to be male stereotypes, e.g. cowboy, farmer, trucker, soldier, the only female heroine was the maid from the hotel.  I think Medora needs to up its aspirations and get a few more female heroines, perhaps physicist, doctor, quantitive analyst?

During the day we cycled into the TRNP and walked a loop trail to an high plateau with an enormous prairie dog town, all barking away at us as we walked through it.  The day was enlivened (Helen you may wish to stop reading now) when Alex shouted ‘Snake!’ and I looked down to see a rattle snake next to my right food and raised up as if to strike, seems old deafo hadn’t heard it’s warning and had startled it.  Thankfully it didn’t bite me and we were able to continue our walk without Alex having to run for help while I began to hallucinate.  The walk was also memorable for both of us picking up ticks on our legs, which are horrible mini-crab like creatures that can latch on and suck blood and if not gotten rid of quickly infect you.  So, a beautiful walk but impinged by closed encounters with local fauna.

Wednesday, we drove to the north unit of TRNP and had a far more uneventful walk, this time above a bend in the Little Missouri river which was glittering below in a wide flood plain surrounded by large numbers of cottonwoods trees.  After the TRNP we drove to our campsite at the Lewis and Clark State Park, what we didn’t realise is that the town of Williston is an oil boom town for the Bakken Shale field and the good burghers of the town have decided to ‘improve’ their road infrastructure all at the same time.  At one point the road seemed little more than a ploughed furrow with earth movers either side of it.  Reg was not happy and we decided to try and detour on to county roads not realising these are not tarmacked and consequently we created a dust storm and both Reg and we became filthy. 

The next day we set off early and took a large detour around Williston and then along US highway 2, which runs from coast to coast, the wind had got up and we were buffeted for the whole 350 mile journey we made that day. We stopped in Glasgow for a coffee, it seems the railroad named the towns along the route after random European locations (there’s a Malta, Devon, Chester etc.) the local town signs feature tartan and the local high school teams wear tartan uniforms.  Our destination was a campsite in Havre (you guessed it, named after Le Havre in France but pronounced Hav-ver).  We encountered benign sexism at the campground when the owner, Roger, was startled to see that it was Alex who manoeuvred Reg in reverse into the tight site, saying she was ‘better than many men with her driving’, not sure she was too impressed.

Friday, the wind had died and we drove the rest of the route to Glacier National Park, it was on this drive that Reg’s odometer ticked through 15,000 miles.  We bought him with 283 miles on the clock in November 2016 and in general he has served us pretty well, we’re hoping the next 15,000 miles are similar.  We arrived at Glacier National Park (GNP) in the afternoon to discover the most highly recommended attractions, the Road to the Sun and the Highline trail were both closed owing to the volume of snow still up on the top.  The rangers weren’t able to give a definitive date for their reopening with only vague ‘in the next two weeks’ statements.

We persevered and over the next three days walked several incredibly beautiful trails, highlights were walking up to Iceberg Lake which sits in a natural amphitheatre below the mountains with waterfalls all around.  We walked to Florence Falls which tumble down a series of rock terraces, this was after a boat trip across a beautiful blue lake.  We had to walk 12 miles out and back with four hours to do it, it seemed we were running by the end but the falls were worth it. 

Our Moon’s Road Trip guidebook recommended stopping at Park Café in St Mary for their pies, which in America are sweet fruit pies rather than savoury, and we had a slice of huckleberry pie.  Huckleberries seem to be similar to blueberries and grow wild throughout the region forming a major part of bears diet, they can eat up to 100 lbs during the season to add weight before hibernating.

Alex will pick up next week, however we both love Glacier and can’t recommend it enough, we preferred it to Yellowstone and will definitely be back another year when Going to the Sun is open!

We stayed at the Kampgrounds of America outside the park, which has one of the most beautiful backdrops of snow-capped peaks we believe in the US, unfortunately its wi-fi is one of the worst we’ve encountered.  They did deliver a pizza to Reg’s door, so not all bad!

M 

What a week – Shaun and Marie arrived, we drank beer and wine, hula hoops arrived from the UK, but most of all we finally saw Mount Rushmore. As some of you know when asked what was I most looking forward to seeing, I kept answering that I wanted to see this tacky memorial to presidents that I know nothing about…!! More on that later…

So, after the excitement of the election night – do watch the video – (I think even Jeremy Corbyn did not have as good a time as us… but I am pretty sure that I felt as sick as Theresa May the next day) we headed east to Custer State Park to await the arrival of our dear pals – Shaun and Marie.

We were like kids waiting for 25th December – we were so excited to see them that we did not know what to do with ourselves. We cleaned Reg from top to bottom and then sat and waited until they happily pulled up in their hire car. Sooo good to see them and have a laugh – all week, just like when we go skiing – interspersed with political chats and even God got a look in one night when we were on the second bottle! Students across the land would have been proud how after all these years we are still trying to get to the bottom of that issue!

Armed with goodies from home via Mummy, we settled them into their sleeping quarters and they were the perfect guests.

We had a full itinerary for the week – Sunday and Monday we spent time in Custer State Park. South Dakota has recognised how outstanding the Black Hills are and have protected and cherished a great park. Sadly Ray, still no sighting of Calamity Jane or Doris Day – but as she says the pines are so high that they touch the sky… There are bison, pronghorn, prairie dogs, mule deer, coyotes and of course a lot of birds in the park.

Shaun was very patient with the amateur Bradbury birders. Matt, we discovered is a lot more eagle-eyed than any of us thought and did a great spot of a sap sucker on Monday afternoon which was one on Shaun’s to see list and then he followed it up with a nighthawk on Wednesday. It was wonderful to be able to have someone say what everything was without Matt and I having to go through all the birds we know (about 30 and eliminate them one by one!). Both Marie and Shaun you could tell have done this a few times before!!

Tuesday dawned and we headed off to Mount Rushmore. Slightly nervous that we would be spending a whole day at a man-made monument instead of just being in the Black Hills, we stopped on approach and saw the ‘faces’ from afar. Of course, they are great presidents and as the morning progressed we all became a lot more impressed with Mount Rushmore.

For example, the road to get there was a complete 360-degree corkscrew – never seen that before – so that was exciting and we had to go through a couple of stone tunnels that framed the monument perfectly. On the plaza in front of the monument we sat and had a coffee and tried to name all 50 state flags (your next task H) which is ok when they helpfully put their names on them – not so easy when they are just emblems.

We walked around the site and ended up with a ranger talk in the artist studio. The scope of the project and the dedication of the sculptor – Gutzon Borglum was humbling, as was the timeline and potted histories of the four presidents. We all came away having found the experience a lot more intellectual satisfying than perhaps we had thought it would be. If we were American I think we would have been even prouder!

After Mount Rushmore which of course you may have noticed that we recreated in Reg on our last night with Shaun and Marie (we hope that you can spot the difference…) we went to Crazy Horse. Now everyone with young children should come to see this now as it is unfinished at the moment and we may not live long enough to see it completed.

Crazy Horse was a Native American leader who was basically stabbed in the back by a US soldier back in 1877. On some land in South Dakota, the Lakota tribe commissioned a Polish sculptor, Korczak to complete a huge statue out of the rock of Crazy Horse on his horse. The scale is larger than Mount Rushmore, but unlike that project it is self-funded. As visitors, the admission goes to the project and their progress is dependent upon how much funding they have. It started in 1948 and Korczak himself died in 1982 – but his whole family have carried on the project and the dream to make Crazy Horse come to life. It is a nuts idea – but very impressive and actually very moving.

So rather like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona this is a modern-day marvel happening before our eyes. There is no completion date at present, so I might not see it finished but some of our younger readers might.

Wednesday, we called into Wind Cave which is another National Park in South Dakota. Not as exciting as Carlsbad Caverns – it is nonetheless a bit mind blowing. Over 100 miles in length, it was full of weird water made patterns in the limestone. No stalactites or stalagmites as it is completely dry now, but instead they have formations that are called box work. We did the candlelight tour which was exciting as we had to scrabble around in the dark – just like the original tour guides. We emerged blinking into the sunlight without any broken ankles – phew!

Thursday, we headed off to the Badlands which is in a nutshell (apologies for any geologists out there) is the debris that has eroded off the Black Hills from when they were mountains. It has arranged itself in these glorious mounds of layered sediments. All sorts of colours – black, maroons, oranges, greys and beiges. Some are very high – 100ft in places and some just look like a cement mixer has spilled on the ground. Totally unlike anything we have at home and great as a backdrop to more wildlife.

We had some great sightings in Badlands – long horned sheep, golden eagles and most excitingly an owl with long legs – a burrowing owl who is happily active in the daytime. We had been trying to get this little fella checked off the list – so when we spotted him we were rather excited. He duly went back into his burrow!

So, after two days in Badlands we headed back to civilisation and Spearfish. The end of our time with Shaun and Marie – but a good place to say goodbye. Spearfish is in a delightful canyon, back in the Black Hills and a good location for them to continue their trip down to Wyoming and Colorado. We have headed to North Dakota – but Matt will tell you more next week.

We had a great dinner, went to a bar and did some shots. For our Australian readers, sadly Matt still does like to buy everyone a cock-sucking cowboy or two… even strangers in the bar!

It was wonderful to see Shaun and Marie and we are now very excited to see B and Tim in a few weeks’ time – although we have to get to California by then.

South Dakota was wonderful. The people were lovely, loads to see and do and the countryside was stunning. If you ever get the chance – do come and visit as the towns were charming and it is still the wild west.

A x

Apologies for the late posting of our travels after Yellowstone, we’ve been hosting Marie and Shaun for a week and between laughing, drinking and Shaun’s obsessive birding I’ve had no chance to write this piece.  Alex will have more news of travels with M&S (the other acronym is even funnier of course) later.

After Cody, we decided to drive the scenic route back to the eastern entrance of Yellowstone along the Shoshone Canyon.  This drive was described by Theodore Roosevelt as the most beautiful 50 miles of road in the USA, so no pressure on it to meet expectations.  It was very beautiful, another example of why simply driving through the landscape can be so rewarding.  Being the Bradburys we couldn’t drive along a scenic route without stopping to walk through it and after a false start along a trail to a creek that was raging and too high for us to cross we walked along Elk Ridge Trail in the Wapiti Forest.  As a second choice, it couldn’t be beaten, it was a really stunning walk with a creek below us, a series of hoo-doo rock features above and snow-capped mountains in the distance.  We saw two horse riders and two other people on our three hour walk, otherwise it was quiet away from civilisation with only birdsong to break the silence.

We spent the night in Greybull, another small town struggling in the west, the KOA owner greeted us with two cold bottles of water and turned out he was Dutch but had lived in the US and Mexico for the last 25 years, although he still has a strong accent.  We walked around the town which after the closure of its main manufacturing industry was hanging on with a couple of fertilizer plants and the railroad.  We drove from Greybull up through Tensleep Canyon, another scenic drive in Wyoming, and spent the night at Keyhole State Park, we camped by the marina on a reservoir created by yet another dam.  We meant (well Alex did) to go for a walk through the park after arrival but a severe thunder storm and rain put her off the idea and we simply hunkered down for the evening.

The next day was far brighter and we set off early for our destination, The Devils Tower National Monument.  We hadn’t heard of the Devils Tower (we learnt that the apostrophe was lost a while back in translation!) until our waiter recommended it on our anniversary.  It was strangely familiar to me and after we were told of the evening’s film it was clear why, it is featured in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the 70’s film directed by Stephen Spielberg.  The tower is an example of igneous rock (look it up) that hardened underground and has been exposed by the erosion of the other rock surrounding it.  It is formed from predominantly hexagonal columns of stone in the same fashion as the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.  It is incredible both in the distance as it is visible for miles around and close-up where many columns have collapsed, although none in the last 10,000 years.  We spent the whole day walking around it and went to two ranger talks on its geology and history of human interaction.  The Native Americans regard it as holy and several tribes have myths around its creation, while later arrivals have been awed by it and it was created the first National Monument in the United States.  We went for a run along the road beside it the next morning and discovered that a large number of prairie dogs also call it home as we saw dozens of them standing sentry over their burrows along our route.

After breakfast overlooking the tower we drove on towards our next recommended destination, Belle Fourche, and stopped en-route in Sundance where the Sundance Kid took his name after being incarcerated for 18 months.  Apart from their one major claim to fame there wasn’t much else to Sundance apart from a very muddled museum of local curios.  They’re moving the museum to a much more imposing location and perhaps this will revive the town again.

Belle Fourche’s claim to fame is that it is the geographical centre of the United States, one that we found difficult to understand as it’s in South Dakota, however if you include Hawaii and Alaska, it seems it’s true.  We spent two nights in town, on the first day we went up to the local recreation area (another dam) and spent a wonderful afternoon kayaking in beautiful sunshine across the sparkling reservoir.  In the evening, we went to the towns ‘Downtown Thursday’ where they have a band, street food and most importantly a beer stall!  We had a marvellous time listening to ‘Ruckus’ a local country and western band, drinking beer, eating pizza and watching a large proportion of the local population come out and chat and dance with one another.  It was the night of the UK election so it took our minds off the drama unfolding back home.

Strangely we awoke with somewhat of a hangover, non-the less we needed to be up and on to our home for the next five days so after a reviving breakfast of stodge from the local café we took our laundry into the local laundromat and then drove south again through Spearfish. I had my hair cut in a traditional barber’s shop where the talk was all about fishing and hunting with photos of client’s successful hunts on the walls.  Alex came to pick me up and was particularly taken with the fact they had vacuums they ran across people’s heads after their haircuts to pick up the loose hair, an unusual sensation and one she suggested replicating with our Dyson hand held vacuum in Reg (hmmm, not so sure myself).

We drove on through Deadwood (home and death place of Bill Hickock) to Custer, deep in the Black Hills of Dakota.  The scenery is canyons of red sandstone and hundreds of square miles of pine forest, populated by bison, pronghorn deer and a fair number of RV campgrounds, one of which was Custer Gulch, outside the town of Custer named for the yellow haired loser of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Custer led a surveying mission through the black hills that discovered gold, this led to a rush of prospectors who didn’t respect that the government had designated it an Indian reserve, which strangely upset the local Sioux and Cheyenne tribes and coming full circle resulted in Custer being defeated by the tribes at the battle, which is actually located in Montana.

We spent Saturday cleaning Reg inside and out and planning for the next week.

M

After our week in Yellowstone we were gradually reintroduced to normal life… We have ended the week having worn our best clothes, eaten in restaurants again and marvelled at some man-made wonders. After all that nature and wildlife, it was a complete contrast and just what we needed. We must not take the natural beauty of the US for granted and we even had a night away from Reg!

 

So, we returned to Jackson Hole and decided at that point that as lovely as Grand Teton and Yellowstone had been – it would be really lovely to have a bit of a treat to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  We flirted with the idea of flying to Seattle for a few days, but after a pretty soul destroying look at flights and Amtrak we settled instead for a night at the Gallatin River Lodge.  Sheryl, our pal who has just started The Luxury Travel Boutique can also vouch for us, that one, reasonably priced night in a ranch is an impossibility… but this Lodge was a bit of a one off and I think we got lucky.

 

It was a four hour drive up the western side of Yellowstone, briefly back into Idaho and then into Montana.  We arrived about 3ish and the place was lovely.  Very simple, but nicely done.  It was for Suzy and Sheryl’s reference a little like our last place in St Tropez with the ever-attentive host.  It turned out we were one of two guests – but at least this meant that they looked after us very well.

 

After the early mornings and cold nights of Yellowstone it was heaven to have a huge bed, lovely white linen, a hot tub and of course a fantastic dinner and a nice bottle of wine.  No idea why we had a shot of Sambuca at the end of the meal – but the waiters seem to have encouraged us!  Matt is getting very western these days and had a bourbon with the boys.  I told you everyone is butch up here!

 

Sadly, it was just a 24-hour break as the hotel was fully booked the next night and Reg was looking at us beguilingly from the car park.  So off we went again and planned to go see Bozeman and then on to Livingstone.

 

Thank you, Karen and Michael who sent us a link, to the best small towns in America and Bozeman was the chosen one for Montana.  I can totally see why.  It is stunning scenery all around and you can see the level of affluence.  Really attractive downtown area and we took advantage to buy some new walkers as we have worn the others out!

 

Our campsite in Livingston was beside the Yellowstone River which was a gushing torrent, but steadily the weather has heated up all week and we were able to sit outside and rest (nothing to do with the hangover from the night before!).  We were very chilled and enjoying a change in pace after all the hiking, driving and sightseeing of the week before. 

 

We left Livingston and broke our journey at Cooney State Park.  This was on our way to Cody where we wanted to spend the weekend.   We had a long old day – getting up and washing Reg, doing the laundry  and food shopping and then set off to the park.  Nothing gets on our nerves more than unmade roads and we discovered that the park was 12 miles down a dirt track.  Matt had spent two hours of his life cleaning Reg and the bikes (The Thompson Twins) and by the end of the day they were dirtier than when he had started – but he was very brave about it!

 

Cooney was a very strange park – no water or electricity, but after the trek in – neither of us felt like going anywhere else and we are totally self-sufficient with the exception of the hairdryer when we cannot plug in.  It was attractive, a lake setting in a dip between hills and mountains.

 

We reached Cody after driving over the border into Wyoming in the middle of an enormous storm. The sky went mad and we had a really gusty wind for a bit, but survived!

 

We camped first night at Buffalo Bill State Park.  Bill Cody aka Buffalo Bill founded Cody and everything is named after him. This bit of the Shoshone River was dammed in 1910 to provide water for agriculture as it is feast or famine here normally.

 

When the snow melts, the river can be 19ft higher than usual, but the rest of the year they only tend to get 10-12 inches of rain.  So, they built the dam that created the reservoir a century ago.  We walked to the visitor centre on Friday and it was amazing.  The dam was the tallest in the world for a period and it was a very scary sheer drop down looking over the edge I can tell you. 

 

We might be becoming American as there was a lady in a golf cart offering lifts from your vehicle to the visitor centre.  I would say maybe not even a quarter of mile.  She seemed so offended when we initially refused to get on her golf cart that I relented and got on.  It was great – very speedy! What she did not realise is that we had walked three miles from the campsite – so we did not feel too lazy.

 

On Friday, we arrived in Cody proper.  We went to the Buffalo Bill Museum of the West which was excellent.  I had never understood who Buffalo Bill was or why it mattered, but now I do!  In a nutshell he was a hunter, a scout for the cavalry who ended up becoming almost the Beckham of his day.  By the end, he as famous for being famous and put on these enormous shows with Native Americans, bison, horses and Annie (Get Your Gun) Oakley which toured the world.  He was motivated to explain the Wild West and preserve it before it all disappeared.  Very interesting as by the end of his life he realised the impact of what he had done earlier – i.e. killed a lot of Indians and bison and seemed to feel very sorry about it. As well he might!

 

Friday, we sampled the Cody nightlife and did a little bar crawl and went to the best restaurant in town for ribs and a burger.  All good fun – but the absolute highlight was in an Irish brew pub where we saw a very bad taste menu description – Black and Tan onion rings!  We are still smiling about how terrible this is! Also at the same bar we saw a new hairstyle for Matt – photo attached.

 

But at last I come to the highlight of the week – the rodeo!  We went to the Cody Nite Rodeo and it was the best fun!  We sat in the grandstand and loved that all the kids dress up in Stetsons and boots.  With the help of the programme we quickly became experts in barrel racing, the tie down and of course the bucking bronco competition. 

 

As you can imagine after some beers the Bradburys were cheering the contestants. There were some hilarious moments – for instance when a man fell on his arse trying to kick his boot off or when a very young girl on horseback had the slowest horse in the world. 

 

The atmosphere was fantastic – really good fun – who knew that there were men called Rodeo Clowns and that their job is to act the fool throughout the whole thing?  This one in particular was very funny.  For reasons, too complicated to explain he had a corgi and it proceeded to do what the Blue Peter elephant did all those years ago.  Never work with children or animals (a fitting tribute to John Noakes) and this guy was surrounded by bulls, kids, calves and then the corgi.  It made us both cry with laughter.

 

We will have to go to another rodeo now to see if they are all as good as Cody’s or whether that is the best one.   To explain how funny, it is – do see the photo of the Pepsi banner.  The way that they thank the sponsors is for women on horseback to ride like the clappers around the arena with these huge flags… none of the digital hoarding nonsense we get at Spurs!

 

Check out the video of the bulls and cowboys. This morning I laughed all over again about how hopeless my videos were – was I so drunk that I could not follow the horses or were they really quick!?  Anyway, I have deleted a load of blurred rubbish – these are Matt’s efforts.

 

So, we have had a really lovely week – the sun is back out and we are very excited about seeing Marie and Shaun who arrive next week.  That said though it has been a terrible week again at home and we heard about the London Bridge attack yesterday afternoon.  Horrid business and I am sorry for the impact that it has on everyone.  I am also sure that it will be wonderful to get the election over. 

 

Be assured we are thinking of everyone and send you lots of love from the good old US of A.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So off to the original US National Park, created by Ulysses S Grant no less, to preserve the unique environment.  Didn’t stop some of the early park custodians making a little money on the side with poaching and logging but it was rescued, like so many things in the US, by sending in the army.  They administered the park and built much of the infrastructure up until the First World War when they were strangely occupied elsewhere.

We picked up our hire car, a brand new (the Enterprise attendant was very excited that it had a grand total of six miles on the clock) blue Hyundai Sonata, which Alex promptly nicknamed Bluebell and drove in convoy with Reg back up through Grand Teton to the entrance to Yellowstone.  There had been a massive fire at some point along the John D Rockefeller Jr driveway and much of this area is bare of trees and regenerating so not as pretty as we had been told it would be (although it is much prettier going the other way as you have the Teton range in front of you).

We crossed into Yellowstone and drove past two frozen lakes before seeing Yellowstone Lake, which is enormous and was also partially frozen.  There was still a lot of snow beside the roads which gave us both a foreboding that many trails would be closed during our trip.  We visited the visitor centre at Old Faithful to ask about trail access and a supercilious volunteer said we would be better staying on the boardwalks, of which he was proud there were a whole 15 miles of in the Old Faithful area.  Hmmm … a whole week to walk fifteen miles, I’ve walked further than that drunk on a Saturday night, including the additional distance for weaving!  He also waved a photocopy of a map that had a large amount of the park greyed out as restricted, this is to let bears have plenty of space for whatever bears do in woods.  Actually, it’s to let them recover from hibernation without being disturbed by humans all staring at them, but it did curtail a lot of the hiking opportunities.

So, we’d arrived, the park is covered in snow, the ranger says to walk 15 miles in seven days, what else can restrict our enjoyment?  Road closures of course!  There had been subsidence on the road between our campsite at Fishing Bridge and the Canyon region to the north.  Yellowstone is larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined (neither are that big a state) and there is basically about four roads that cross the park, the closure would mean adding an extra 45 miles to any journey above Old Faithful.  It doesn’t sound much but when the top speed limit in the park is 45 miles an hour and often traffic is held up for wildlife, it would add two hours of driving to many excursions.

Traffic held up by wildlife?  On several occasions, we encountered bison jams where they walk along the road between grazing areas.  They are pretty awesome owing to their size and at this time of year they have calved so several had their calves with them, which are nicknamed red-dogs as they are the size of a large dog (slightly bigger than a German Shepherd but smaller than a Great Dane) and are ginger.  You do not, we were warned several times, want to get between a calf and their mother unless you want several hundredweight of irate animal bearing down on you at up to 30 miles an hour.  So, everyone sat there patiently while the bison wandered oblivious to the humans in tin cans around them.

Bigger than bison jams are bear jams, because bears are rarer (there are about 700 – 1,000 grizzlies versus 4,500 Bison) when someone spots a bear they pull over to watch, closely followed by generally another hundred vehicles all pulled in beside the road to do the same.  We were guilty of this ourselves when returning on our second evening and coming across around 50 cars and several RV’s parked by a spit of land that runs into Yellowstone Lake.  They had all stopped to watch a single grizzly who was fishing off of the spit.  Really amazing site to see him (we always presume single bears are him for some reason) launch into the water, then wade out, shake off the water and on one occasion emerge with a fish in his paws.  We watched him until he wandered off into the distance.

During the week we saw another nine bears, three were mothers with cubs although we didn’t see the cubs of the third bear.  They are majestic creatures, but also very cute with their cubs playing beside them.  Not cute enough not to heed the parks warnings about the dangers of hungry and maternal grizzlies attacking humans.  We carried our bear spray, an aerosol of stringent pepper spray, with us at all times, apart from once when we were walking our friend of boardwalks trail near Old Faithful and we came across a mother and two cups really close to the trail.  Fortunately, she wasn’t interested in us and continued to feed her cubs before walking further away. 

One morning, we got up at 6:00, unheard of on holiday, to drive up to the Hayden Valley to watch the wildlife that are out earlier than holidaying tourists.  We saw herds of elk, a grizzly with her two cubs, and loads of bison.  We drove further up and visited Tower Falls, a massive waterfall above the Lamar Valley through the road between our campsite and Canyon that had recently re-opened.  On our return trip we spotted two adult bears up on a snow covered slope above, they were amazing to watch as they climbed higher on the mountainside.  Coming back into the Hayden Valley we saw a number of cars pulled over to the side, we got out and spotted the black wolf they had been watching.  While we watched an elk began chasing the wolf around, we feared for its life as at one point it seemed to be tiring and the outcome would not have been pretty, however it rallied and the wolf gave up and slunk off into the forest while the elk re-joined its herd that it had with hindsight been protecting.

Apart from wildlife, Yellowstone is famous for its geothermal features, which they are proud to tell us there are more of in the park than in any other location on earth.  We visited virtually all of them, West Thumb Geyser Basin, Old Faithful, Lone Star Geyser, Mammoth Hot Springs, Prismatic Spring.  All different in some way, all thought provoking on their geology that they are driven by chambers of molten rock two to five miles below ground superheating steam, which is released through fissures in the rock.  We watched Old Faithful, so named because of the regularity of its eruptions, twice and saw Castle (even bigger than Old Faithful but erupting only every 13 hours or so) in the distance once spout water over 70 feet into the air.  We looked into beautifully clear blue pools that gently bubbled and would boil you if you fell into one and we smelt the bubbles of sulphur omitted by many of them.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t participate in one of the highlights of the park by swimming in the hot springs at Mammoth (as recommended by Kelsey in Steam Boat) as the Boiling River Trail, as it is named at this point, was closed due to high water volumes.  Possibly fortunate for other visitors as we forgot our bathers and would have had to go skinny dipping (there’s a thought for you all!).  We did walk the Lava Creek Trail up to the Undine Falls, a beautiful waterfall on the creek. 

So, wildlife, geo-thermals, what else … beautiful scenery would be the other reason for visiting Yellowstone.  While there are no standout mountains such as the Teton range, the park is very high with lots of rivers and lakes.  These rivers, along with glacial erosion, have created a range of gorges and canyons.  The most famous, and spectacular, is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.  The canyon is carved from yellow sandstone, which is streaked by seams of minerals, such as iron, that create a range of colour layers in the rock.  The Canyon also has an upper and lower falls, where the Yellowstone river flows over harder volcanic rock into the canyon, they are both over 300 feet in height and were thunderous to hear with the volume of water flowing down the river.  The trails to the brink of falls were closed to allow maintenance of the trail, considering we wouldn’t be coming back, we and two other Brits decided to hop over the barrier and walk down in any case.  Awesome view of the water, green with nutrients washed from the mountainsides with snow melt, rushing across the lip of the fall to plunge hundreds of feet below.

We both loved Yellowstone, one piece of advice would be to camp or stay in lodges in the different regions to cut down on travel, however there’s nothing you can do about snow.

M