Originally posted from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, this update was split into multiple parts (see related articles) for the sake of reducing the loading time due to the images involved…

Currently the furthest north we have been in the US so far, visiting another friend made through the internet - Bonita. She actually came to Australia last year and she flew out of Sydney 15 minutes before we arrived to do some photocopying (see the Sydney 2000 travelogue for those tales) so we had to come to this side of the world to meet.
Having finally escaped Denver and the state of Colorado (new state motto : “You Ain’t Never Getting Out Of Here”), we cruised up through Wyoming to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks and it felt great to be driving somewhere again that did not lead back in a loop to wait for a cheque.

It was really interesting to see all the animals in Yellowstone, with a large number of bison and elk pretty much everywhere we looked. We did not see any moose or bears, but hey, we’re only disappointed about the moose really.

Interestingly, we expected it to have warmed up by now but it turned out that they closed down Yellowstone two days before we were there due to snowfall. Our campsite in Yellowstone was very cold and there was snow all over the ground. A scientific theory that we tested for ourselves was whether or not snowmen like to sit around a campfire. Apparently, they don’t mind it for a while but then they get all tired and start to fall over.

As an aside, camping in Yellowstone is very expensive. The campsite was US$16.20 for a basic site. To have a shower was US$3.00 which the woman at the reservation desk happily told me was for “as long as you want”. I pointed out that we did not want to shower for that long, and offered to pay US$1.00 for five minutes and if I took longer, we’d pay them US$6.00 instead. No go. I didn’t really expect them to be flexible, but it was worth a try. Lots of people around us were all smelling pretty ripe, so it seems that there were lots of other people who felt that a shower was too expensive for them as well.

The geysers in Yellowstone were more regular in their eruptions than at Rotorua, New Zealand, but I think the boiling mud was more interesting in Rotorua. Then again, when it comes down to it, how exciting is boiling mud? I admit it - I like weird stuff…*grin*

We found many SPOTD’s who felt it necessary to touch the obviously hot things to see if they were in fact hot. You might recall the SPOTD in Rotorua who tried to climb into a boiling geyser. None of them were at that level, but they all stuck their fingers in. Took a photo of one of them just because it’s nice to have an image of a real live SPOTD.

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001