Steamboat Springs, CO to Estes Park, CO

Almost home, but there's still time for one more National Park. We drove up in to the Rockies today and found ourselves winding up and down and through a variety of greenery. The lower valleys (lush, grassy and home to moose and elk) gave way to the densely forested slopes, all aspen, douglas and lodgepole. Then the trees disappeared and we were up on the crowns of the smaller peaks: broad blasted arcs of fine grass cropped by bighorn sheep, dotted with wild flowers, and strewn with lichen-covered rocks. The weather moved fast, a kaleidoscope of sun, rain and roaring wind that didn't seem to trouble the tiny squeaking pika or the long-tailed weasels. Every 1000ft climbed is the equivalent of travelling 600 miles north, and at over 12,000ft the environment was a close match for Arctic tundra. My head goes a little funny that high up, but it was rather wonderful to be up there: great to peer across at the greater, greyer mountains above us, astonishing to stare down into the glacial valleys, so far below us that the forests looked like a fine lawn.

And then it was on down and down the very windy road to Estes Park, which is touristy but not in an unpleasant way. Tomorrow we'll grab another pair of Junior Ranger badges and head off for the airport, hoping against hope that we see a Hawaii plate on our way...

Rock Springs, WY to Steamboat Springs, CO

We cut clean across Utah today, following another almost entirely deserted road. There were distractions though: some very steep hills, the Flaming Gorge Dam and some useful little signs that explained what sort of rock we were driving through and what fossils we might find if we happened to have packed our trowel. The fossils are a big deal around these parts, as we discovered at the Dinosaur National Monument.

The National Park Service is one of the greatest things about America. The land and animal and plant life they look after is pretty special, but the way these things are protected and managed is simply brilliant. We experienced this again today as the boys earned another pair of Junior Ranger badges, this time by learning about the amazing natural history which happens to momentarily be part of the USA. Ranger Bryan took us on a guided hike through a valley of fossils, explaining from first principles how it had all come to be here. In the stones we saw the marks left by the waves of an extinct sea some 150 million years ago. We saw unexcavated femurs rising from the cliff face, somehow more convincing evidence of the original creature than a full reconstruction might be in a museum. Finally, we were shown petroglyphs made, at some point during the last thousand years, by the people who lived here before the Europeans arrived. Then Ranger Bryan pointed up to a mountain on the horizon where there was a shadow: a small forest of Douglas firs. "That's what we call a remnant forest; the original forest has receded until that's all that's left, but at one point it would have covered this whole area."

Now those people are gone, the forests are gone. Most disturbingly, the lush grassland that greeted the Euro-American settlers only a century or so ago is gone, replaced by the arid scrub we have seen so often. But eventually, of course, all things go the way of the dinosaur.

Today's best name has got to be Dinosaur, CO, where we stopped for coffee. It's another itty-bitty place, and it used to be called Artesia before they changed it to try and drum up some interest from the passing paleophiles. It's either cute or desperate, but the street names were changed too and the main drag is called Brontosaurus Boulevard.

Licence Plate news - we only need Hawaii. We've seen everything else (even a Washington DC plate, and there was much excitement when Delaware and Rhode Island turned up) but sadly no sign of anyone from the Aloha State. Still, there's no shame in getting 49 plus DC when the one you're missing is Hawaii. It just makes it all the more bizarre how often we've seen it in the past. Two more days to go though so who knows...

Grand Prismatic Spring

Canyon Village to Rock Springs, WY

We've reached the giddy lights of Rock Springs, on our way back down from the make-believe realm of Yellowstone. It's a veritable metropolis of 23000 people and look, wi-fi! It's exciting, even after just a few days, to see things like traffic lights and fridges again, but I can't deny that I feel a bit sad to have left behind the wonderful world of mountains, geysers and potentially fatal animal encounters.

There's a thing called a Bear Jam (or an Elk Jam, Moose Jam or what-have-you). This is where one is driving along through the park and one sees a sudden confusion of cars parked up on the road-side and many people pointing and looking and trying to take photos whilst a park ranger frantically divides their time between directing traffic and trying not to let anyone get killed. We were very lucky to plough into one of these at the bottom of a steep slope below a line of cliffs, where all the pointy-looking people had found a bear. Three black bears in fact, a mother and two cubs. So we stopped and looked too and took lots of pictures, like this one.

And then, finally sated of the need to see bears frolicing in the wild, we got back in our car and drove off. At which point we realised there was ANOTHER huge adult bear on the other side of the road, about six feet behind all the pointy-looking people who were all pointy-looking the wrong way. Well, we were sort of off down the road by then, but I'm pretty sure that it all turned out fine.

I'm under no illusions about how dangerous bears are. For the best part of a week I've been bombarded with advice and warnings, seemingly everywhere. Bear Spray gets mentioned A LOT, especially in those little perspex triangles on restaurant tables that would normally otherwise advertise the puddings. Everybody is big on Bear Spray because it can apparently forestall a Bear Attack, providing you fire the thing correctly, remembering to allow for the crosswind whilst judiciously gauging the range and closing speed of the GREAT BIG BEAR RUNNING TOWARDS YOU. It's sold everywhere up thereabouts at the reassuring price of $45. We didn't buy any. Firstly, it's a sure-fire way to guarantee not seeing any bears. Secondly, at that price it is obviously just a tax on scared people. Thirdly, there were no refunds or returns. And then, yes, there was some evidence to suggest that bear-related injuries only occurred when the bear had been startled by a human. As long as people travelled in groups and made plenty of noise, they would probably be fine. Plenty of noise - have you met us?

Later that night, driving back over one of the mountain passes, we ran into another Bear Jam. Somewhere far below, tucked away in a fold in the land was a grizzly bear. Occasionally, as it lollopped about, it broke cover for long enough that we could actually see it, and one of the other bear jammers actually lent us his binoculars to have a look, which was very decent of him. But yes, we had now seen all the bears and could go home happy.

The next day we went for a little walk, following a trail from a flat meadow that would eventually take us up into some rocks called the Hoodoos. Soon enough the slope had become rather dramatic and we found ourselves inching along a very narrow path about half way up what I would call a cliff. I was thinking about bears (and making sure we were being sufficiently noisy); I was also thinking about the dangerous plunge on our right. But most of all I was thinking about what might happen if a bear perversely decided to be surprised by us on this tiny vertiginous path. That sounded like a very sticky situation indeed. But we persevered and soon the drop beside us became only a very steep slope. I started to relax. And then Laura said, "I can see a bear."

She sounded fairly relaxed and later on I found out there were two reasons for this. Firstly, she really hadn't thought it possible that we would actually stumble across a bear. Secondly, the bear she had seen was not the far-away-adult bear that she initially assumed it to be. I could see that it was in fact a very small baby bear that was really very close indeed, slightly below us down the scrubby slope.

"What about the mother?" I asked. That sounds like an idle question, and I like to think I kept my voice calm, but what I really meant is "Oh shit, it had better not be behind us." At some point during the next one hundredth of a second Laura realised that she had spotted a cub, I saw the
mother's large brown shape begin to emerge from the bushes, and we all turned and walked back the way we came. A few seconds after that I realised that they were the same bears we had seen the day before. And a few seconds after that it occurred to me that the fourth bear might be lurking nearby too. But if he was, he heard us coming, and we didn't fall off the cliff either so, all in all, it was a brilliant walk.

I'll tell you what else is brilliant: the Old Faithful Inn. We had dinner there last night and it is an extraordinary building. It's essentially a log cabin, although it is enormous, palatial almost. But despite the size, because of the wood, it is fundamentally a cozy little nook. Now I had had a pint of beer by this point, but it seemed to me to a wonderful place, friendly and homely, and, as the evening darkened, filled with light and music. Although the giant hearths were swept and empty, it felt like there were cheery fires roaring there anyway. Best of all was the thought of it standing there all by itself in the splendid wilderness, radiating warmth and song into the darkness. I will definitely return.

Today though was all about the leaving. We drove south, swapping Yellowstone for the Grand Tetons National Park. Suddenly there were proper mountains ahead of us, grey and pointy, and raggedy old forests unlike Yellowstone's fresh green growths. I like mountains. I like the way they look, the way weather spins and boils about them. I realised this when we took a trail up into the lower slopes towards an outcrop called Inspiration Point. When we finally clambered up there, the view was of the lake and some distant non-descript hills. Pretty enough, and worth the climb, but I couldn't see the mountains anymore. We got to look at them plenty though as we drove away. Soon enough the sun was setting behind them through the rain, sending astonishing bars of light down through the cloud, haphazardly blazing across alpine meadows that were certainly full of moose, and bears.

We left it all behind and returned to Wyoming, the bright lights of Rock Springs waiting for us two hundred miles south through a darkening desert of silver-green sagebrush.

Thoughtful Paws

Still no wi-fi, so still no pictures. This is a problem because I'm sort of lost for words. Today we saw waterfalls and bubbling acid pools. We saw bears. We crossed the border into Montana and the sky became instantly black with rain; we came back and it stopped. We saw bears! It was all pretty amazing.

If I think of any better words, or find some wi-fi, I'll have another go at this, I promise.

Cody, WY to Canyon Village, Yellowstone NP

No wi-fi here but there is, an unexpected surprise, 4G in the lodge so I can post from my phone at least. 

It's been a long day and the frontier sophistication of the Irma hotel seems very far away. We haven't traveled far, but we've done a lot inside Yellowstone, driving up over the Absaroka mountains and down through the geyser basins to the canyon. 

We have had to do a lot of stopping and walking, but most of all we have been goggling: staring in awe and delight at forests and mountains, or elk and moose.

Best and most impressive are those features that can't be found elsewhere. I'm trying not to think about it, but Yellowstone is basically the vast caldera of a supervolcano and this unique geological backstory is the reason for the countless geysers, hot springs and sulphurous blasts of steaming air. 

Ol' Faithful is the most famous, a geyser that plumes up a torrent of water every 88 minutes or so. Sitting and waiting for it to strike feels a little like watching test cricket: there's a gentle pattern of white against green, an inconsequential ebb and flow whilst nothing interesting happens. Then, like the pressure building on a batsmen, tiny spurts of water can be seen, like sporadic flashes of a bat outside off stump. Eventually sufficient force is brought to bear and the full eruption sends the stumps flying as water blasts up into the sky for several minutes although, to my surprise, it goes as just as far horizontally, as the prevailing wind carries a heavy spray over part of the audience.

It really is quite impressive but, by itself, it feels a little like an artificial feature. When its place within the network of surrounding geysers and steaming pools is understood it becomes all the more remarkable. 

I liked those smaller pools very much but the true star so far has been the Prismatic Pool. It looks artificial, photoshopped even, but those colours are real: ice blue in the centre, fading into outer rings of bright green, sunshine yellow and tangerine. The colours are caused by temperature-sensitive algae or something but it looks utterly spectacular, especially with the constant clouds of steam that roll off of the magma-heated water. Alternatively we were roasted and chilled as the mountain breeze battled with the pool's own atmosphere. What an incredible place. 

I'd post a picture, but there's no wi-fi. 

Thermopolis, WY to Cody, WY

The hot springs of Thermopolis didn't detain us long, fascinating and restful though they are; the state-run baths restrict guests to wallowing to just twenty minutes, which is, it turns out, slightly longer than I can cope with blood-hot water and the sulphurous smell of eggs. There were buffalo though - not in the baths, but wandering along the roadside of the state park - and impressive beasts they are too. We ended up learning quite a lot about them today, including the fact that they are not really buffalo at all, but bison. You have to be careful who you mention that to, though, especially at our next stop.

Cody, WY, (population a whopping 9689), is named for its founder William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. It's one of those names that one hears, but before today I would have been hard pressed to tell you exactly who he had been. On a good day I might have vaguely suggested that he was a sort of showman but it turns out he was so much more than that. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody put us right, describing him as nothing less than the world's first global superstar. He was certainly the genuine article: a wheeler-dealer frontiersman and scout who explored the wilderness of the west and became a colonel in the US cavalry amongst many other exploits, all of which were celebrated across the world.

British Buffalo Bill fiction.

Somehow, Cody transmuted this reputation into a theatrical career: by the 1870s he was playing himself on stage in New York in the winter months and spending the summers back out west in the saddle, generating new material. Eventually he ended up impresario and star of a blockbuster live show 'Buffalo Bill's Wild West', which toured America and Europe for twenty years, delighting the likes of Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm. Along the way he became a fictional character too, immortalised in newspaper stories and even British penny dreadfuls and boys' own comic books, well into the 1930s.

It's an astonishing story and he was an astonishing man: an advocate of women's rights as well as the fair treatment of the native peoples of north America, even though he had been their enemy on the plains as a scout. And then he set up a city here, on the way to Yellowstone. He built a hotel in it too, expecting tourist traffic to flood this way and look, here I am, sat in room 59 over one hundred years later. It's all very impressive. Just don't call him Bison Bill.

Despite the name, the museum here wasn't just all about William Cody. There was an exhibit on Yellowstone itself, a gallery of beautiful western photography and a whole wing given over to the Plains Indians. It was a wonderful exhibit - non-judgmental, focussed on the artefacts they created and used, and on explaining their way of life. It is impossible to see such things and not think of the terrible impact of us (the texts referred to Euro-Americans) upon them, the dreadful and savage events of Sand Creek or Wounded Knee, the decline of these indigenous cultures. But America, at times a wholly abstract concept, has been created as much by force of will as by force of arms; and in this wilderness especially it feels like nothing more than an idea imposed upon a landscape. The native peoples of the plains were required by nineteenth century America to abandon their ways, to live in houses, to farm individual plots of land, to drink and to pray to christian spirits. What became clear in this exhibit is that it didn't entirely work. These people adapted, retaining what they could of their former lives. Nothing else summed this up for me like this piece: ancient beading techniques redirected to embellish that most American of items, a baseball cap.

Finally some housekeeping from yesterday that I unaccountably forgot to include due to a great sleepiness. Yesterday's best place name was Chugwater, WY. Today's was Meeteetse, WY, but only because I couldn't read it without thinking 'Me Tipsy'. The Licence Plate Game went very well but listing states is tedious - much easier to quickly colour in a map: yesterday's haul is in red, today's in blue. You are welcome.

 

Houston, TX to Thermopolis, WY

It's been one of those odd travelling days where it feels like we haven't really done anything even though we have flown and driven nearly 1500 miles. The illusion is strengthened by not having reached our final destination: on our way to Yellowstone - still 200 hundred miles up the road - we have fetched up for the night in Thermopolis, WY, (pop 3009) and named for its hot springs which we will sample tomorrow. Even if they are rubbish I won't complain because just driving here has made the whole trip worthwhile.

I don't know how I imagined Wyoming to look, but it is astonishing so far. We flew to Denver and took a car, heading north on the 25 through the neat Colorado landscape; only the gauzy outlines of jagged mountains far away to the west threatened the orderliness. Then we hit the state line, skimmed Cheyenne and the land changed.

Grass in all directions, seemingly forever. A dark wild shade of green, rising and falling, the black road cutting through the swell. Impossible not to think of the sea when faced with this expanse, an open ocean of isolated houses floating like boats, and schools of cows. The sky misted and a spray of rain fell. Far off a great black storm loomed and loomed, filling a quarter of the sky - but even so, above the vast landscape it looked small, adrift. Soon enough we had skirted it and were ploughing on.

It's an empty place. We saw some wind turbines, faint in the distance, and some pylons. Occasionally the railway would sidle up along side the road, the orange engines a splash of colour. We experienced genuine excitement when tumbleweed rolled into our path and cracked under the car like lightning. The towns, and there were one or two, were merely loose collections of buildings, barely cohesive. Casper had an industrial flavour to it. Shoshoni seemed half given over to scrub and sand that lay between the lots, and the houses looked washed out, as if blanched by sea-salt. Hiland, literally just a few buildings, had a sign up declaring its population: 10.

Once we left Shoshoni the evening sun managed to break out from below the clouds and the road wound unexpectedly up along the bottom of a narrow canyon, Wind River. The many-coloured rocks of the cliffs were as beautiful as spring flowers.

And then suddenly we were here in Thermopolis, which so far is quite charming. The Elk Antler Inn is comfortable and festooned with antlers, quilts and carvings of bears. The highlight tonight though came when we buckled to some tired boys and grabbed a McDonalds: the staff were effervescent and I almost had to high-five one when she started insisting that her colleague go home and watch Doctor Who. Here! At what feels like the end of the world, even if it isn't quite the end of the road.

By the way, I feel like I should draw your attention here for an alternative take on our journey so far.