Yellowstone

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

A longish drive now to Yellowstone mostly up route 89 after turning on to it at Brigham Young City. Small towns many Mormon churches with their distinctive spires a lot of scenery which was mostly broad valleys well watered and farmed surrounded by mountains, the valleys all at between 4500ft to 6000ft. Everyone lives up in the air here.

Stopped the first night at Alpine Junction at the Grey River Cove rv park, a mistake really, quite basic and expensive which infuriated Judith.

Trundled on on the 5th June and liked Jackson Hole , funny name for a town, or we liked the centre of the town when we finally reached it after passing at least three or more large shopping malls and typical American mis match of businesses as you approach a town. The centre is old and was pleasing to our eyes.

Onward to Grand Teton National Park, water, lakes , mountains and good scenery where we stayed the night at the Signal Mountain Campground 200 yards from a good evening meal in the local lodge where we had buffalo steak, I think.

6th June found us in Yellowstone National Park at the Bridge Bay site for two nights. A large site poorly laid out with staff who had not much idea of there pitches as we could not get on the first one given and we noticed other people with the same problems. Basically the pitches were designed many years ago for smaller units and now ours at 30ft is really on the small side compared to many up to 50ft plus car towed at the rear. This park should really be redeveloped.

Drove round that day and saw Yellowstone canyon, good but not mind boggling.

Yellowstone is huge and has many varied landscapes all in keeping with major mountain scenery, valleys etc and all superb. Yellowstone is,however, about geysers in one form or another. The hot centre of the earth exposing itself through the various geysers,springs, mud spouts and so on.

The most apt description of these areas is Kipling ' the tide has gone out on desolation',

Desolation is the word, geysers are fun, Old Faithful spouting every 90 minute to 60ft is watched by hundreds every time and the formations and pools made over an immense area are unworldly but essentially are part of our creation. Many geysers erupt 150 to 200ft but sporadically or every 7 hours so you are lucky to see a lot of action. We spent three days in the area walking around boardwalks, climbing steps and descending slopes looking at desolation. Essentially how the world was and is still being created is a distinctly hot and messy business.

The active part of Yellowstone is an old caldera (rim of a past Volcano} which is something like 40 miles diameter, still active hence all the geysers and measured to have risen since 1925 over 2 feet. The horrifying thought is when this erupts, and apparently it will at some stage, it would probably change the whole earths climate to a nuclear winter for countless years. The fall out from the eruption would be 40,000 as great as St Helena and would cover half the USA in 10ft of ash. Not bad eh!!! Not a horror story but fact some time in the future. The earth continues to mutate we occupy a fraction of a second in its time span.

We stayed one night in Madison Camp ground and two night s in Indian Springs Camp ground, both good sites we enjoyed Indian Springs best though we did get 12 hours of snow there and cold weather for our walks on the boardwalk. Dressed up for winter days we were.

We even managed a shower at the hotel at Mammoth Springs after basic sites for many days..

Animals seen during our Yellowstone time include 3 Grizzly bears, two black bears though one was a cinnamon colour., hundreds of byson, dear, proghorn dear that can run faster than cheeters, elks and many birds including osprey.

A very different Park to the others we have seen exhibiting unique areas extending back beyond primeval to creation.

We left the park by the North east entrance in quite heavy snow which closed one road which we might have taken, a pass over 10000ft but we had already decided to go to Cody a township of Buffalo Bill fame. Spectacular scenery en route much of it now with snow covering the peaks and many areas lower down. Forecast is now for warmer weather as this was unusual, no doubt like the floods back in the UK being unusual. Nature is unusual and certainly tracing it back over the millions of years in this area man has had nothing to do with it.

I'm riding hobby horses or getting profound but perhaps we think rather too much of ourselves against eternity.