Yellowstone Smellostone

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We are now at Cody in Wyoming, the home of Buffalo Bill. We went to a western cabaret yesterday evening followed by a Rodeo. We were dubious about the cabaret but turned out to be excellent, especially when they played the dual, with violin versus guitar and the food was good too. But that is as far as it went as the Rodeo was awful, with most of the performers looking bored to tears with a constant barrage of rubbish from the commentator and a clown in the ring. There were a few kids of 11 to 15 riding wild horses and they did look keen, but the best bit was when they invited 3, 16 to 18 year old's from the audience and got them to galope round 3 barrels with different coloured sponge poles between there legs. After which they but full sized dustbins over them (i.e. down to or below their waists) spun them round 5 times and told them to galope round again. with encouragement from the commentator 2 of them ran straight into the outer fence and that was the highlight of the show.

Prior to that we spent 3 days in Yellowstone and to be honest found nothing of great interest until the last day. Once you have seen one foul smelling bubbling steaming pool you have seen them all! The trees are interesting because there roots boil and arteries clog, which kills them, but they can apparently stay standing like that for 100's of years.

Fortunately we arrived at Old Faithfull 35 minutes before it was estimated to blow, so we sat with about 3,000 other people and waited. It actually took 44 minutes and did put on a fairly spectacular show, but I am glad we hadn't waited for hours (like some we sat with).

The best bit was Yellowstone's own Grand Canyon and this was worth spending some time at. I am not sure whether my pictures quite do justice to the amazing colours in the Rocks. If anyone else goes I would suggest driving down the west side, with the Canyon and the mus pools, it would be rude not to go to Old Faithfull (but find out the next predicted blow time before you go).

We met a woman from Salt lake City who was quick to point out she was not a Mormon, and told us that there were not as many Mormons as you would think. She told us that a recent survey said that 40% were Mormon and the other 80% were other faiths!  Chris told a guy asking us about our trip that were going down to Argentina and he asked her where that was! Another was asking about previous trips and we talked of Mongolia, he said he didn't know where that was because he did not do Geology at school.!

After Yellowstone we went over Bear Tooth Pass (about 50 miles west of the top of Yellowstone) this was superb, even though it was quite cloudy. At the top of the pass almost 11,000 feet) we were looking down on the clouds. This was well worth the detour and with very few people.

I mentioned someone asking about our trip, but this literally happens at least a dozen times a day and if we charged a $ a photo we would have about $500 by now, tent up or down. In fact there was a queue of 5 people waiting to take photos as we came back to where it was parked in Yellowstone. Very few people have seen a roof tent before and many ask 'did you make it yourself'.

We can now add Osprey to our wild life list and the two in the nest are actually chicks ready to leave the nest, apparently there were three that morning, and when we went looked again about an hour later there was only one. Plus some more Bison blocking the road. Oh and a grizzly in the trees I could not get a shot of.

Now to Buffalo Bills Museum and then on to the Grand Tetons.