It is Monday evening, 6 September, as I write this.
We have arrived for an overnight stop in Salt Lake City, having driven 400 miles south from West Yellowstone. South Utah awaits, the State of Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and of course, Grand Canyon (which is actually in Arizona – I am getting good with these U.S. States, aren’t I; I hope that you are impressed). To say more of this, would be to write next week’s entry.
We have just had three days in Yellowstone Park. It’s a bit bigger than Richmond Park. The drive today from the West Gate to the South Gate was about 80 miles. In all, I guess (without consulting Wikipedia), the park must be about 60 miles by 80 miles.
The weather for all three days has been great. Nearly completely clear blue skies, broken only by sleety snow (yes –snow, that white cold stuff) early yesterday evening as we drove back to our hotel. Today’s (Monday) morning sun was enough to melt the frost on the fir trees. Yellowstone Park is at 2,000 metres (7,000 feet). Snow in the summer is not unusual.
The scenery is so much more varied than we could have imagined.
Slow-winding rivers
Fir Tree covered mountains (surprising to us Swiss, given the altitude)
Frost on trees (well, what do you expect at a height equal to “La Sciala” in the Alps)
Vast Flat grasslands (called “Meadows”, ha ha)
Gurgling Mud Pools
Gushing Geysers – old Faithful is called this, as it goes off every 90 minutes
Gorges
Waterfalls
Bison – we hope you enjoyed the earlier video (if not, see blog on “Bison fails drunk driving test”)
We still have not seen a bear (see the warning notice on the slide show to follow)
When walking on Sunday, we heard a very large crack – a tree had fallen across the path. We decided that the trees were more dangerous than the Bears, but the Bison are cuddly. The Park Rangers would not let me take one home.
This link takes you to some photos, showing each of these. Go to the slide show, which should take you through part of the rich panorama that we experienced. You have to guess which photos belong to which subject that I have just described. It should not be too hard.
http://picasaweb.google.com/103404285149801869665/TheHawkersInYellowstonePark#
Hi there! Thanks for the news. ur reports bring back beautiful memories of when we were there in Yellowstone Park, indeed slightly larger than Richmond Park:) I remember the herd of bison crossing were really impressive, esp. when we were trying to drive through. we just hoped and prayed that not one of them of be soo drunk and think our convoy of 2 cars should be pushed out of the way. When we were there, there were still very large tracts of burnt areas. Drive on, the best is still to come...Bev
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