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.