Yellowstone

This was a major highlight of the trip, it would have been great to camp in the park and to have been one of the few cyclists we saw doing that. Cars are the go here, with the odd tourist bus. As it was, it was wonderful anyway, but we had to drive out to stay in a strange little (expensive) room ten miles from the north entrance each night.

Here's one of our first sights of the park, inside the west entrance, you can see plenty of bison, which was exciting at first. Later, bison became a bit ho hum, you see them often. The rangers are very concerned about them though, because there are several gorings every year. They lumber along, but the rangers say they can do 35mph and leap over cars!

This is Old Faithful before it went off. When we arrived at 5pm, we heard someone say that it was predicted to erupt at 6:06pm, so Hannelore insisted we go over to the lodge and have an anniversary drink. I took this picture from there.

I took a better movie of the actual eruption, this picture is the bottom part, it was way too big from where we were standing to get a decent picture.

Imagine a panorama with this the top half, that's there best I can do, this doesn't do justice to what is actually an exciting event...

This picture is taken next day from a location near the Tower falls, looking down the Yellowstone River valley.

And this is a picture of the Tower Falls themselves.

We were surprised, and I was concerned to learn that Yellowstone sits atop an active volcano. Seething magma is apparently as little as three miles beneath our feet. This is one of thousands of fissures in the park, bubbling mud and steam caused by this proximity to the volcano. This one is called 'Sulfur Cauldron', and a bison is there keeping warm.

This is another famous falls, the Lower Yellowstone Falls, taken from Artist Point near Canyon Village.

On the way out, we saw this elk resting in the grass. Another dangerous animal according to the rangers. In fact in the visitors center, there is an entertaining video of them charging cars.

Next day, we fluked the ultimate, a mother bear and cubs, feeding by the road. This is a pretty rare event, I believe, so we felt quite privileged. We saw these near the Tower falls.

We got up early and spent the whole morning trying to see animals in the Lamar Valley. This is a hot spot for bears and wolves. We didn't see much though, a couple of wolves in the distance, some prong horn deer, and thousands of (boring) bison. However, the whole experience was very worth while, especially since we saw the bears.

We moved on, back up north, to Bozeman. This is Hannelore sampling a margarita Cadillac at a restaurant near our motel. You can see she's recovering well!

I anticipated I would be eating plenty of meat this trip, but there is normally something vego on every menu.

We've renewed our car hire here, and will go down to Pueblo, Colorado over the next week or so.