Into the Wild

Heading up north, passing from Nevada into Utah, we stayed in Salt Lake City. If any place in America can be the absolute polar opposite of hedonistic hustle and bustle of Las Vegas, this is it. Wide open streets, perfect little houses, majestic white official buildings and flowers in bloom everywhere you look, make this one of the prettiest cities we've visited so far, and the fact that the inhabitants are predominantly Mormon only served to make it more interesting. We went to visit Temple Square, where the grand white Mormon Temple towers over the old Mormon council hall and the famous Tabernacle Choir hall. A couple of Sister Missionaries gave us a free tour, and they were really lovely people, but they didn't quite manage to convert us, which was obviously their main aim.

The next day we went out to Antelope Island, to paddle in the Great Salt Lake. It's huge, and stretches out into a colourless landscape, where everything is pretty much dead, except for the swarms of flies. From there we went up to Idaho Falls, which is like every other sleepy little American town, except for the waterfalls that run through the centre of it, and the hordes of geese that inhabit the riverbanks. It was just a one night stop over and then we headed up into Wyoming, to Yellowstone, the first American national park.

Yellowstone is absolutely huge and absolutely beautiful, with snow capped mountains, frozen lakes, vast forests, clear rivers and deep valleys. Animals abound here; we were camping by a river shared with a family of elk and a herd of bison. We've seen a bald eagle's nest, a group of yellow-bellied marmots popping in and out of holes in the ground, and even a black bear napping in the shade of a tree - for obvious reasons, we kept our distance, but it was still amazing to see!

As well as fantastic wildlife, Yellowstone boasts the oddest geo-thermal features in the world. It sits on one of the largest volcanoes on the planet, and because of this, hot springs, mudpots and geysers are everywhere you look. The hot springs have coloured the rock such varied and bright colours that they look like abstract paintings, especially against the black and white landscape of snowy Yellowstone. There are boiling pools containing so much sulphur that foul stenches roll off the water in steamy, vomit-inducing waves, and there are geysers that shoot up water high into the air. Gurgling, bubbling, erupting, popping and the worst smells I have ever experienced made for some interesting hikes!

The most famous of the Yellowstone geysers is Old Faithful, which shoots off a huge shower of steamy water at reliable hourly intervals. We watched it from the cosy lodge lobby, sipping on hot chocolate, before returning reluctantly to our freezing cold tent. After a couple of nights of camping (minus temperatures, spider-infested toilets, animals creeping around outside in the dark) we treated ourselves to two nights in a hotel in Montana, just north of Yellowstone, with a beautiful view of the mountains and the river from our window. For our last day we drove into Lamar Valley, hoping to see some wolves. We had heard some howling, but sadly, the wolves managed to evade us. Thinking we had seen all the wildlife we were going to see, we headed back up to the hotel, and on the way we saw more animals than we have seen the whole time we have been in America. We saw three black bears sniffing through the grass for food, we saw a pronghorn deer, a bull elk, animals that looked like mountain goats leaping from rock to rock and - my absolute favourite - a grizzly bear. Watching the huge animal run across the snow was my highlight of Yellowstone; it was beautiful. And when it started running in our direction, I admit, it was pretty terrifying. But we survived, and got some great photos for the effort!

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