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

Last week we were in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.  It is where men are men and women are also quite butch as it is very cold!  We had a guide one day who said there are only two seasons in Grand Teton – winter and July.  Sadly, we were there in winter!

All started well – Monday we set off on a trail around the marina, up over the headland to see the amazing Jackson Lake.  We noticed that there were patches of snow and when the visitor centre gave us the trail map and said that the clearance crews had not been out – we anticipated the odd tree blown across the path.  Four hours later we felt we had been in a horse show jumping event as we had to climb over so many trees.  It was like a cross country course – every hazard known to man and horse – water jumps, snow patches, leaves and of course the issue of bears.

We brought bear spray last Sunday at the park entrance and noticed that everyone has it on them – all the rangers, people out jogging and even fat Americans in golf carts within the campsite!  We were warned that there are black and grizzly bears in Grand Teton along with elk, moose, bison, beavers and otters.  First few days no sightings of anything other than elk and pronghorn deer.

On Tuesday one of the things to do in Grand Teton is to walk around Jenny Lake – named after my mother of course.  Sadly, we were beginning to feel that we had not picked a lucky year to visit as this do not miss trail around the lake was closed for repair!  Never mind we set off to do the bit we could and were entertained by some yellow bellied marmots on the way and some lovely people from Boston that we got chatting to. 

The snow became worse and worse as we tried to climb up to Inspiration Point and at this stage I called my sister H to wish her happy birthday.  Slightly surreal as it was like being on a ski holiday – white all around and we had a picnic up the mountain like those nutters that you all see on the side of the piste.  We gave up shortly after lunch as the trail was completely obscured by snow.  To warm up we went to one of the mountain lodges in the park and had a couple of beers and some nachos (that well known alpine speciality).

On Wednesday, we had terrible rain to start with and then it all went quiet.  I put the blind up and discovered that it was snowing and that lovely muffled feeling was everywhere when it all begins to turn white.  During Wednesday we must have had about four inches.  We knew that the paths would be even more impassable so just did some very tame walks on the shore of the lake.  It was very pretty as you can see – but slightly odd in the middle of May.

We are warm in Reg but you know what snow is like.  After half a day everything is just cold and wet and you have had enough of it. 

Thursday was also snowy to start with – we are now getting through the propane gas cylinder with our central heating on… but we steel ourselves as it starts to clear to tackle a hike up to Grand View Point.  Only issue is that we have to cycle there and then walk.  We ride down to the start and see some Dutch people ahead of us – which is good as this is bear country. A man has taken it upon himself to warn us just as we are about to start the trail of a grizzly mum with two cubs.  Slightly unnerving.

 Walking is much more tiring when you have to keep lookout and also try and watch your feet.  The Dutch were good though as they chatted away all the up the hill which is also the best bear deterrent going. 

We got to the top and had a 360 degree of the park and it was stunning. The Teton mountain range is very like the Alps as it is glacially formed so very jagged and interesting.  The weather changes every five minutes – but when the sky is a blue background it is just like the Toberlone box!

We left the Dutch and took a path down the hill around the lake and that is when, dear reader, we finally saw our bear.  Matt was in front, but quite calmly I informed him that our new friend – a black bear – was only about 50 metres away up a hill.  The bear saw us, but we managed to take two pretty poor pictures and then Matt got the top off the spray just in case our new friend accelerated down the hill.  Luckily, he did not!

We turned around shortly afterwards as it was impossible to see where we were going in the snow and we did notice a lot of yellow patches and no human footprints – so we could have seen Yogi and Boo Boo at any moment. 

Cycled back and saw a wolf on the way to the site – just a typical day in the wild west!

Friday we took a float trip down the Snake River.  This is in a specially designed inflatable raft that drifts 10 miles downstream avoiding all the fallen trees and debris in the river.  The flow is so fast that what can take two hours at certain times of the year – we did in just over an hour.  Our guide was excellent and he remarked, much to our amazement, that of course the fastest time for the river is in July when all the snow has finally melted.  As it was so cold last week – half of it is still on the mountains.

It was a great experience being so close to the water and seeing the power of the currents – but sadly we did not see as much wildlife as we wanted to.  But by the end of the week we had seen all that we should have – elk, bison, moose, bear, beaver and on Saturday three river otters.  We also saw some eagles and the very rare and unusual Canada geese! (They are everywhere!).

Saturday night we headed into town – Jackson Hole to be precise to do chores and prepare ourselves for our Yellowstone week.  We had a great pizza and a walk around Jackson – which now that skiing has finished for the season was getting itself ready for summer visitors.

After so much outdoors fun – we rocked up into the Million Dollar Cowboy saloon and straddled the saddle seats at the bar.  Ignoring the opportunity to line dance we sat at the shiny bar and had the drinks lined up.  The evening was great fun as everyone else that came in wanted to have a go on the saddles and we ended up taking pictures for people and talking nonsense.  To get into the spirit of being a cowboy we even had a bourbon chaser with our beer.  A mistake come Sunday morning – let me tell you.

So, Grand Teton – a real experience.  Not for the faint hearted.  We have probably been colder and wetter than at any stage since we left Elephant and Castle – but in a rosy cheeked, exhilarating way we have thoroughly enjoyed our week.  Yee Ha!

A x

PS we have no wifi so will have to upload photos later…

 

 

 

From East Canyon we headed north to another lakeside campsite, this one called Rendezvous Beach (nope, no idea) next to Bear Lake, which straddles Utah and Idaho.  Bear Lake is much bigger than the other lakes we’ve camped by and is different in being a natural lake (well the US Corp of Engineers has meddled a little at the north) set in a bowl beneath mountains.

Bear Lake also has a ski area, although this was closed when we arrived so no opportunity to get any value from the 50% additional we paid for our travel insurance to cover us for skiing.

Ok, enough of the whinging about insurance, the lake is freshwater from the snow melt above and because of the concentration of minerals is incredibly blue (bluer than the blue stone of Galveston even) and around the edge you can look through to the bottom and it reminded us of the Aegean.

It’s early in the summer season for Bear Lake and the campsite had only three other RV’s when we arrived and during the time we were there the maximum number was about eight RV’s and three tents so we picked a site on the lakeside which had the best view, so far, from Reg that we have had.  Opening the door let onto the beach with the clear blue lake framed with snow-capped peaks in the background.

We cycled and walked around the lake, didn’t get the kayaks out as it was too cold and too big, watched a number of birds, some of which we could even identify and generally had a lovely laid back time.  We were told by Merlin, who owns a couple of drive-in restaurants called oddly Merlin’s, that the area goes from a population of 310 to over 50,000 during the peak season between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  You can see this is true by the number of hotels, time shares and condominiums around the lake, plus a fair number of obvious summer homes shuttered for the winter.

After three nights in Bear Lake we decided to move on up into Idaho, towards Craters of the Moon National Monument.  Because of the distance, we stopped over at Massacre Rocks State Park in Idaho.  A lovely setting on the Snake River where in the 1870’s a party of pioneers were ambushed by an Indian war party and ten of the pioneers were killed, hence Massacre Rocks.  The river was flowing incredibly strongly and we were advised not to use our kayaks, indeed the head of the park felt it unlikely they would open the river to kayaks until July at the earliest.

The next day we went on to Craters of the Moon, the wind was up and it was very grey.  This is important information as we set off to walk around one of the most desolate landscapes in the US.  Craters is a large area of volcanic rock that was deposited from the Snake Valley rift between 15,000 and 2,000 years ago, geologically it’s about five minutes ago.  The area has unique features, such as; cinder cones where the ground is covered in small particles that were blown out of fissures and settled into cones; spatter cones were the lava was spat out and gradually forms a chimney type structure; lava tubes where the surface cooled, the lava then drained and left a tube and sometimes a cave beneath; kipukas where a vegetation ‘island’ is surrounded by lava flows.  We walked around the terrain and it gives an insight into the violence the earth can throw up at any time, geologists believe the area will erupt again at almost any point and it is on the same rift that Yellowstone is on and at some point, a massive volcanic eruption will occur with devastating effect on the continent.

We briefly visited the Experimental Breeder Reactor One (EBR-1) which is close by and is the first nuclear reactor that provided more power output than that input and led the design for many of the worlds current reactors.  Odd that the major nuclear power research station would be next to one of the most active volcanic regions of the world but if Yellowstone blows up I don’t think anyone will notice about the numerous reactors and storage sites going up too.

After Craters we visited Idaho Falls, the two places of interest being the artificial waterfall on the Snake River created for hydro power and a large Mormon Temple, otherwise not much to look at and a very disappointing museum!

From Idaho we crossed into Wyoming and through Jackson Hole into the Grand Teton National Park.  The park was named by French fur trappers who felt three of the peaks resembled ‘Tetons’ and named them ‘Les Trois Tetons’, the closest translation would be ‘The Three Tits’, so we are now camping in a park called Big Tit National Park.  Despite my puerile sniggering the Teton range consists of nine baby mountains pushed up only 15 million years ago and eroded by glaciers to form a remarkable range that simply jumps from the alluvial plain below into the ski.  They are all snow peaked with several glaciers still upon them and below flows the Snake River currently full of snow melt. 

The park is waking up from winter and we have walked along trails still covered with some snow and while the moose have mainly migrated north, there are still a number of elk and bears in the park.  We haven’t seen bears but have caught sight of elk, pronghorn deer, yellow bellied marmot and beavers.  We have bought a bear spray which we have been instructed in how to use by the rangers and warned against letting off in enclosed spaces, when someone did so in the visitor centre they had to shut it for a whole day to let the smell escape!

Enough from me, next week Alex will update you all on further sightings and we’ll be moving on to Yellowstone itself.

M