Blogs from Gardiner, Montana, United States, North America

At some point in the night Mark and I got an unexpected wakeup call as we slept on the picnic tables, when the rain came. I woke up and quickly realised what was happening, and seeing Mark practically sprint to the van, I followed in pursuit, entering the van to discover we had woken Todd up very abruptly. For obvious reasons he didn’t look too pleased that he has been woken, and we both quickly settled down on a row each, before the van fell into silence again as we all got back to sleep. Only problem was I’d set myself up in my sleeping bag the wrong way on the row. Whilst Todd and Mark were lying with their heads by the side of the van and their legs hanging over the aisle at the ... read more

We really slowed down today, mother nature saw to that. I woke to the pitter patter of rain on the roof and the sky was gray and bleak. I said hooray. I have been on a tread mill and just couldn’t stop myself. There is so much to see here and I felt that if I wasn’t out there the chance of a lifetime was missed. I have got to hear the music and smell the flowers. So we lounged around I made the second half of the oatmeal pancakes with nuts and cleaned up a bit then went to take a shower. You have to understand what a big deal showers are here. Water is scarce and the park has one campground out of 15 that has a shower. I am in a private campground ... read more

Yellowstone National Park was the very first National Park in the whole world. Nothing had really been done like it before - an area of land designated solely for wilderness preservation and public use, funded by the government. Yosemite National Park in California was America's first State Park, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864, and central to the development of the government's future idea of national parks. It wasn't actually given National Park status until 1890, eighteen years after Yellowstone was signed by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, nearly 140 years ago. The 3,468 m² Yellowstone National Park sits mainly in Wyoming, but the western and northern borders extend into Idaho and Montana respectively, which is possibly where the final notion of a National Park came from, instead of the existing idea of the ... read more

September 26, 2009 “Take off that Ranger hat so I can slap you across the face.” Today was somewhat disappointing….the fire in Yellowstone continues and the road to Old Faithful is closed. To see it we would have to drive around the park, the northern route, to get there. This would take three and a half hours, one way! We decided to drive north to a town called Livingston, a place Anthony Bourdain had done a show on. We were hoping to first go to Little Big Horn and hit Livingston on the way back. After driving about an hour we realized that Little Big Horn was another two hours! We went directly to Livingston instead. We visited a little restaurant named Pinky’s that Bourdain had highlighted. Donna recognized the owner right away from the show ... read more

drove to gardiner... read more

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 ... read more