heading home...

Had a luxurious sleep in till 7am this morning, then went to the fresh food market for breakfast - great choice, it's an interesting deli-style eatery with fresh produce and chocolate covered everything, pots of coffee (the usual mud) and great food. Back at the hotel we packed the car and then headed downtown for a couple of hours. Walked to the capitol building - a copy of Washington's with fabulous stained glass portraits in the chambers, vaulted ceilings, lots of marble and polished brass. There's a marker on the 13th step of the entry noting one mile above sea level.

Denver is a clean and open city, with wide streets and a mall area with restaurants and shops and a free mall transport system that works beautifully. I suppose it's at its best in Summer but we are impressed anyway.

Cute squirrels in the park nearby are burying peanuts (for later consumption I guess) in the grass and clinging to trees as if they were about to leap out at us :-). Interesting Pioneer fountain has a mother with a child in one arm, a shotgun in the other... Couldn't get into doing any shopping, so picked up the car and checked out some RV dealers on the way to the airport (some of those 'trailers' are HUGE, but the USA freeways cope very well with whatever size vehicle you care to own). Thinking that it might be an interesting way to see some more of the states.

Denver airport is spread over many kilometres of the plains and looks like a row of tipis on the plains. Flew over the Grand Canyon on our way to LA - it's just as spectacular as I remember and we get a fabulous view from the left side of the plane. LA is smoggy as we start our descent and the freeways are full of cars. Still, it's a spectaular sight of its own.

'Momzilla' and her family were in the seats in front of ours during the flight. I hope they enjoy their Disneyland vacation, they certainly entertained us on the nearly 2 hour flight from Denver.

Sitting in the Qantas/AA lounge now with a soothing glass of chardonnay and some cheese and crackers. Our Sydney flight leaves later tonight. Home soon and looking forward to Aussie accents and driving on the correct side of the road :-) Have missed everyone at home, though we have had a fantastic 'vacation'. See you all soon.

Top of the world - well, almost!

Started the day well with a great breakfast at Two Brothers Deli and Yoga room in Idaho Springs, (the only decent coffee I have had in the USA) then continued on our way towards Mt Evans. Stopped for a wildflower walk and garden ramble on the way up the mountain, through amazing bristlecone pine trees which are thousands of years old - true survivors in this harsh climate. The road to the summit is the highest driving road in the USA at 14,260 feet (4346.5 metres). It is a SPECTACULAR drive up the mountain, but the temperature at the top was O degrees C with a wind speed of 27mph and a wind chill relating to that. We spent a short while at the top exploring the old buildings and reading all the altitude sickness warning signs before the relative warmth of the car beckoned and we started back down to Summit lake. Another marmot scooted across the side of the road as we drove, and there were little birds jumping around in the rocky grassland at the lake. Mad people on bicycles were ascending and descending the road, even in the cloudy/sunny/cold/windy conditions (wait a few seconds, it changes).

We stopped at picturesque Georgetown for lunch, a tiny mining village that looks like a Hollywood set for a picturesque little mining village, then took a detour through the Arahape Valley ski areas before turning back towards Denver.

Checked out a few RVs on the way back into town, managing to find some interesting side streets in the process despite having a nav-person :-)

About to go to 16th street mall for a well earned meal... Tomorrow we fly out of Denver to LA and then Sydney.

PS - eat at Earl's - great food and try the upstairs verandah for a people-watching view of the mall. Go to the rest rooms (won't tell you why :-) Have a great night.

Rocky Mountain High...

We left sunny Wyoming today to be greeted at the border by grey clouds which cleared as we got to Loveland (yep, you read that one right :-) Once the sun came out we put the top down on the Chevy and drove through to the Rocky Mountains National Park. The main road through the park winds around and up to over 12,500 feet. We did a walk out to rocky outcrops on the high tundra (through remnants of last winter's snowfall with unsuitable shoes for the job...) then down into the Colorado river valley. We spotted a big bull moose near beaver ponds and some in the distance on the coyote valley walk. Drove through the park to have luch at the Bear Inn at Grand Lake outside the national park (tried Root Beer! hmmm... awful stuff), then drove back to the Bear Lake trail. The walk around Bear Lake was picturesque, as was the next walk we did, to the falls a little further towards the park entrance. More elk took our attention on the way back to the park entrance, grazing quietly beside the roads.

Driving to Denver via Boulder there are masses of roadside wildflowers and the air is sweet with the scent of blossoms. Not so sweet smelling as we enter the interstate to go into Denver! Found our hotel easily and walked into town for a meal. Sleep will come quickly tonight!

Cody to Cheyenne - more rambling!

Left Cody this morning and stopped at Meetseeke at a quaint cafe called 'Lorraine's'. Walls covered in souvenier plates, the usual bottomless cup of mud and a constant stream of local characters having Sunday breakfast made for a memorable but slower start than usual for the day.

Driving on we passed through the beautiful Wind River Canyon, a seemingly endless descent through steep rocky walls with the railway on the other side of the river. Through several tunnels carved from the rock and finally at a dam and lake as the road heads back into scrubby plains.

Shoshoni looks like a bit of a ghost town as we pass through, but the 'Liars Club' bait and tackle shop gave us a laugh. The highway is long and straight across the prairies until we join the interstate at Casper (not a ghost town!) and eventually arrive in Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, late on Sunday afternoon.

The place isn't exectly jumping and the storm that we had gone around on the plains soon came into town and dumped a cloud-full of rain, cutting short our exploration of the botanic gardens. We retreat to the western shop (Wrangler jeans for just $40 and every style of cowboy boot, shirt, belt or accessory you can name). After the rain stopped we walked through the historic part of town (did you know that Wyoming was the first state to give equal rights to women in 1869?) Then went to a character-filled bar and grill for a welcome meal before going to the hotel for the night.

Photos are of the storm on the prairie and a rock wall in Wind River Canyon. Tomorrow we are off to explore Rocky Mountain National Park, on the way to Denver ...

(well, just a small diversion :-)

There's a bear in there...

Yellowstone is fabulous

started the day by sighting a bald eagle chick in a nest by the road. Silhouette photos because of the sun, but easy to see the feathering as it reaches out for a stretch. There's canada geese by the river and some more bison as we take a drive along the flats.

We walked through the thermal basins we had missed yesterday and some watery sunshine starts to warm us up a bit, but the wind is straight from the snow. There's an elk and his mate grazing quietly in the paddock beside the road, drawing a crowd of photographers and excited viewers. We still haven't seen a moose, but I am hopeful.

Yellowstone lake is still frozen around the edge in many places and the ice patterns in one small bay are interesting enough to call for a short viewing stop.

Bear-jam, just up the road we stop at what the rangers name their traffic jams. Bears always draw a crowd, even from a long distance, but this one was lying sleepily under a tree in a small clearing, giving everyone a great view. Two wolves were circling and one lay down near the bear, looking out at the crowd. Thank goodness for zoom lenses! It's a fabulous grand finale to our time in Yellowstone.

The park had one more surprise though, as we leave via the eastern gate the lake at the pass is still frozen solid and the roadside has snow right onto the road. It's a small glimpse of Yellowstone in winter and very pretty although at 2 degrees C we shiver as we get out of the car to take a couple of photos.

We leave Yellowstone and head east via the Buffalo Bill dam and another tunnel through the mountains to Cody. The Buffalo Bill Museum in this friendly town is fabulous - a collection of five museums with wonderful native american, natural history, western history and art. We broke our visit with a 'trolley bus' ride through the town and out to the dam again, learning about Bill Cody and the town that has his name. Our enthusiastic hosts encouraged us to attend the 'Gunfight at the OK corral' acted nightly in town at the historic Irma's Hotel, so after seeing some more of the museums, we make our way there.

A donation to charity gets us front row seats and we watch as the good guys win (mostly), the bad guys loose and calamity Jane gets handy with a whip. The boys make a lot of noise with guns and everyone steps up for a photo call. Lots of fun in a wild west kind of way. (did you know they can buy guns and ammo at Walmart here?!)

The bus for the Cody nightly rodeo leaves from outside the hotel, so we order a plate of nachos and a budweiser and chat to a friendly local while we wait. The rodeo is entertaining, though nobody manages to stay on a bull more than about a second or two. As we leave the stands the bus pulls out without us, so a friendly local couple offer us a ride back into town. We accept with thanks and it turns out they run a cattle ranch, raising angus cattle. Our 'ranch' is much smaller, but I wonder at the chances of this encounter.

Tomorrow we drive on to Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming - and yet again, sleep is what we need now.

Yogi and friends...

Summary for those who want one...

• wet
• bald eagle (yay!)
• mud geysers
• snow
• grizzly bears
• big horned sheep
• more bison
• swans
• geese
• pelicans
• osprey nest
• canyons
• burnt trees
• geysers
• hot springs
• and more...

Started by forgetting the memory card for my camera and having to drive back 15 minutes to the hotel :-( then joined the traffic going into the park in the rain. That $20 investment in a warm jacket in San Francisco is going to pay off today!

Just by the river about 10 minutes into the park we spot a bald eagle in a tree. He poses patiently while we soon collect a crowd of onlookers. We have found there is a good way to make a crowd in Yellowstone - stop the car and jump out with a camera - within minutes you can have a crowd of 20 cars or more with their occupants lining the roadside asking what you have spotted.

Other highlights of the day include the walks around the thermal areas of course - even in the rain these are spectacular. The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was worth seeing, with a massive waterfall, a great view up the canyon and a look down into an osprey's nest, complete with nesting osprey. We had several sightings of bears including one in scrubland, two playing and wrestling in the trees beside the road, one strolling across a roadside meadow and a large bear and her cub, a distance away in the trees with a stressed mother elk waiting to see if her young one was safe, or had become bear food. Also saw some other elk, pronghorn, more bison, whistling swans, canada geese, white pelicans and several smaller birds I have yet to identify.

Missed photo opportunity of the day was a massive hairy, horned bison strolling down his own lane of the road, with a line of at least 20 cars behind, travelling at bison strolling pace. Very funny.

Today we have seen much of the driveable parts of the park, it is an impressive range of diverse landscapes - a spectacular and beautiful park. I wish we had much longer here but we only have another half day at the most before we head to Cody. Until tomorrow then...

rambling to Yellowstone

It's overcast with a forecast of rain as we leave Salt Lake City - and the promised precipitation catches us as we pass through Logan Canyon and into Idaho. So far we have been in 5 states - California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho. We will pass through three more on this trip, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado.

Just into Idaho we pass through a little reminder of France - the towns of Paris and Montpellier - quite different scenery and housing to their namesakes though. We're following the famous Oregon trail that the pioneers travelled in wagon trains. The snake river winds around through the mountains and is popular for rafting adventures in the warmer months. Heading for Jackson - famous for its skifields at Jackson Hole and the Grand Teton National Park. We will pass through this park rather than exploring it, as we're trying to make the most of Yellowstone.

Afton has a huge gateway across the road made of antlers all linked together - and two bucks on top head to head - impressive but a little wierd...

We stopped at Jackson for ffod and fuel - it looks to be an interesting town and it's tempting to take up the offered rafting on the snake river trips, but we keep travelling.

As we get close to Yellowstone we see evidence of the huge fires of 1988 - the pine forest is growing back thick and healthy but some of the tall burnt trunks still stand high above the new growth.

Stopped at Lewis Falls and Lewis Lake. I am amazed at the amount of snow still on the ground here and the lake is frozen out a long way with a thick crust at the edge of glass-clear ice.

Funny, but my knowledge of Yellowstone NP are based on yogi bear and the 'pickernick basket... well, not really, but I hadn't realised just how active this area is, with hundreds of Geysers, thermal pools, vents etc.

West Thumb Basin was our next stop with many active thermal pools in unique colours (see one of the top photos). This is the one part of Yellowstone Lake that does not freeze over in winter and we can see why, with obvious warm water all along the edges. Seems the waterbirds like it too as we saw some goldeneye ducks diving for food where the warm water was bubbling up.
We went to 'Old Faithful' a large and active geyser whose erruptions can be predicted at about 90 minutes apart and sure enough, about 99 minutes from the last time, there was another erruption. That's the other photo at the top of this post. Afterwards we walked the boardwalks around the very active thermal basin watching smaller geysers and looking at the formations caused by the mud and waters over the years.

Heading for our hotel near the west entrance of the park we come across small herds of shaggy bison with their golden coloured babies nearby. Then some mule deer, a coyote and luckily - a bear, walking up through the scrub from the river and stopping traffic rather effectively as he (or she) crossed the road and disappeared into the forest on the other side. Spotted some eagles' nests near the river and a sign saying not to stop in the protection zone for the bald eagles. Would love to see one of them, but figure we are doing well, with a bear sighting on our first day.

Exhausted by the time we get to the hotel, so check in and then pick up a wild west takeaway pizza and salad and have a drink in the bar while we are waiting.

Bryce Canyon rambling on to Salt Lake City

We saw sunset point at Bryce Canyon last night (the National Parks pass is certainly paying for itself as it's $25 per park entry if we don't have it and the lines are so much shorter with the pass). This morning we had an early start, skipped breakfast at the hotel as we had fresh fruit with us and went to sunrise point at 7am. a little cloudy but some of the formations had some lovely backlighting when it popped out for a minute or two. Driving along the edge of the valley we saw deer, some little field mice, birds views, squirrels - oh, and some fabulous views over the edge! Farview, Natural bridge, Rainbow Point all absolutely amazing.

PS - just for the record we are in Garfield County - believe it or not :-)

We watched the film on how the canyon developed (actually it's not really a canyon but we'll just leave that one) The Hoodooos, the rock formations in the park are fabulous, better look at the photo rather than me trying to describe them :-)

Once we had our fill of Hoodoos, we hit the road for Salt Lake City, about 5 hours from Bryce. Through Circleville (with a sign to Butch Cassidy's hideout) and various other little towns until we reached the Interstate leading into SLC. Seems to be a Utah thing that they inscribe the city's initial in a huge letter (like the ones on US college jackets) on the hill near the town.

Salt Lake City is famous for its salt lake, the 2002 winter olympics and the HQ of the Mormon Church. A clean, pretty city with wide streets and lots of very helpful and polite people. We walked to Temple Square to look at the temple and the tabernacle (missed a performance by the tabernacle choir tomorrow night) and then found our way to the free city 'bus' (tram) to the shopping and restaurant area. Had a nice meal in a sports bar and grill and did the reverse journey to within a block of our hotel.

Sleep is important! Must get some now.

Rambling around Zion...

Grand Canyon to Bryce Canyon on the plan today, but we decide to go into Zion National Park as well, just because we are driving past...

Spectacular views again on the way out of GC - then across to Cameron and north following the Colorado river. We cross at Lake Powell's Glen Canyon dam at Page. Stopped for fuel and went to Wal-Mart! Sad really - that I found it exciting - we picked up salads for lunch and some more amazing Californian strawberries for about $1.50 for a huge punnet. Then over the border to Utah, with Zion NP first on the list.

Lots of fabulous scenery, wildflowers and even hot pink cactus flowers beside the roads. The drive into the eastern entrance of Zion is amazing, through a tunnel that goes for almost 2km, with the most fantastic rock formations everywhere you look both before and after the tunnel. As usual there is a bus service from the Park information centre that runs every few minutes from one scenic view to the next. Zion is a spectacular park - see the photo if I can choose just one...

we decided to try and get to Bryce canyon's sunset lookout for sunset - easier said than done as the sun disappeared behind the clouds about an hour before sunset. The scenery is still awe inspiring. More of that tomorrow! Staying at Ruby's tonight - an old lodge near the entrance of the park. Time for sleep!!!

Vegas to Grand Canyon

Vegas to Hoover Dam and into Arizona - coyote and rattlesnake country. Then Kaibab National Forest and soon the Grand Canyon National Park. We're about 7000 feet high as we reach the edge of the canyon. We booked a helicopter tour that flew over the canyon for about 3/4 of an hour - better value buying avgas than gambling chips in Vegas we figured.

A picture speaks a thousand words, so I'll add just one - WOW!

Dinner tonight in the 'Yipee-ei-o steakhouse' with rattlesnake on the menu. We skipped that and had steak :-) probably one of the best meals we've had so far.