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Melinda had gone to meet Seth and his family at the Pocanos while Clare and I were in Boston. The day after we got back, they got back, and that evening we all packed for our road trip to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, way out west. Our plane to Salt Lake City in Utah was at eight in the morning, but like children we were too excited to get to sleep early, except Seth of course who very much likes sleeping, even more so than me! Instead we stayed up drinking and watching episodes of South Park. Melinda was next as she had a long drive ahead of her the next day driving from SLC Airport to Yellowstone. Clare & I did eventually get to bed, though several hours later at 3.00am, we were up again, ready to leave at four.

We packed the car and Seth drove us to JFK Airport in Queens for our 8am flight. I love airports, no matter what time of day it is they are always buzzing with people with different stories and different destinations. For me, waking up in the small hours and getting to the airport while it's still dark outside is incredibly exciting, knowing that something different and 'exotic' awaits on the other end of the flight. We left the car in the long stay carpark and rode the free airport express train to our terminal. Our flight had to be so early as it takes five whole hours to get to Utah from New York, and once we got there we still had a seven hour drive before it got dark again.

Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the State of Utah, the 45th state admitted to the Union. It's name is often shortened to Salt Lake, SLC, or most amusingly but sadly less commonly, SL, UT. Despite being the largest city in the whole state, it's population is less than 190,000. It's located in the northeast corner of the Salt Lake Valley surrounded by the Great Salt Lake to the northwest and the impressive Wasatch Mountain range to the east. The city was founded in 1847 as Great Salt Lake City by a group of Mormon pioneers led by their prophet, Brigham Young, who left behind hostility and violence in the Midwest. The group faced prosecution from the US government for their practice of polygamy, which was viewed as un-American, and eventually officially outlawed in 1890. Although it still very much goes on today. Salt Lake City is still home to the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS for short, also known as the Mormon Church. However, now less than 50% of Salt Lake's residents are members of Mormon Church, which is a much lower proportion than in Utah's more rural towns. Altogether, LDS members make up about 62% of Utah's population.

At the centre of Salt Lake City, and of the Mormon faith, sits Temple Square, a ten acre complex owned by the LDS Church. In the 1847 founded Square sits the Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake Tabernacle, Salt Lake Assembly Hall, the Seagull Monument and two visitors' centres. It attracts up to five million visitors a year, which is more visitors than the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park. By comparison, Utah's own five National Parks, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches, have a combined annual total of just five million visitors. The Salt Lake Temple in Temple Square is intended to evoke the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and is also orientated towards biblical Zion.

Once we arrived at Salt Lake City Airport and collected our bags we looked for the public bus that would take us to the car rental place just outside the airport. There were quite a few companies inside the airport but in order to save money we went with Fox Rentacar Car Rentals. The bus driver knew the exact address of the place and very kindly swung by to drop us off. They gave us a white Chrysler PT Cruiser, which I personally was very excited about, not because I happen to know anything about cars, I just thought it would be fun to drive across the desert in what essentially looks like a sports hearse. We drove off the forecourt and, although Melinda almost immediately felt uncomfortable with the handling of the machine, we drove on into Salt Lake City to find the REI Gear and Clothing store, where we'd reserved some camping equipment.

We picked up our gear, bought a few other essentials, and drove on to the supermarket to stock up on food that we would try to make last for most of our week in Yellowstone. We headed out again, and drove round the eerily stale Salt Lake suburb to get back on the Interstate-80 East highway, past the beautiful Twin Peaks of the 2,700m (9,000ft) Mt Olympus. The streets in Salt Lake City are relatively wide, at the direction of a Mr. Brigham Young, who wanted them wide enough so that a wagon team could turn around in them without having to "resort to profanity". These wide streets and grid pattern are supposedly quite typical of other Mormon towns of the pioneer era, or the 'pionera', throughout the West. Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, planned the layout of the city in his "Plat of the City of Zion", and was intended as a template for Mormon towns the nation over.

It wasn't long before we realised that this car just wasn't going to go the distance, especially as after Yellowstone, we were planning on taking the thing all the way to San Francisco in California. We decided that it was now or never to take it back and exchange it with something better, which in the end turned out to be a Ford Focus. Something of a Tardis, despite looking smaller on the outside, actually gave us a hell of a lot more room in the trunk for the camping gear, allowed a lot less bags of food piled on top of us, and was much better to drive. We'd unfortunately lost an hour from our already tight schedule, but with a lot more confidence behind the wheel, a lot more space on top of our laps, and the latest Arcade Fire and M.I.A. LPs to spur us on, we rode northeast into the Wasatch mountain range.

Utah is one of the most religiously homogeneous states with more than 60% of Utahns reported to be Mormons, a church which greatly influences Utah culture and daily life. Thousands of years before the arrival of European explorers, two Native American tribes, the Anasazi and the Fremont, of the Ute ethnicity, lived in the region. The Anasazi built their homes through excavations in mountains, and the Fremont built houses of straw. They both disappeared from the region around the 15th century, but around the 18th century another group of Native Americans, called the Navajo, and several other Ute tribes settled in the region.

In 1821, the year Mexico achieved its independence from Spain, the region now known as Utah became part of Alta California, Mexico. In late 1824, the first white person sighted the Great Salt Lake and due to the high salinity of its water, thought he had found the Pacific Ocean. As soon as the lake was discovered, hundreds of traders and trappers established trading posts in the region. In the 1840's, the American Brigham Young had an expansionist's view of the territory that he and the Mormon pioneers were settling, calling it Deseret, which according to the Book of Mormon meant "honeybee", hence the beehive which can still be found on the Utah flag. Utah was Mexican territory when the first pioneers arrived in 1847. Early in the Mexican-American War in late 1846, the United States had captured New Mexico and California, and the whole Southwest became U.S. territory in 1848. It was given the name Utah after the Ute tribe of Native Americans which means "people of the mountains" in the Ute language.

After the dusty desert mountains dropped a little in stature and became a bit more green, it was only a couple of hours before we hit the Utah/Wyoming State border. Wyoming and Utah are two of only three states (along with Colorado) to have entirely straight borders along only longitudinal and latitudinal lines, rather than being defined by natural landmarks. Utah having six sides in total, Wyoming and Colorado are the only two with an entirely rectangular border, giving them just four sides each. Despite being the 10th state in order of size, Wyoming ranks 50th and last for it's population, even falling behind the vast icy wilderness of Alaska! With just a mere 544,000 cowboys, there are actually less people in this 98,000 sq mi state than in my tiny home city of Liverpool!

Coming off the I-80 E just after the small town of Evanston, we carried on northwards along Highway 189 before turning off again in the middle of nowhere, also known as Diamondville, for Highway 30, past Cokeville, into Idaho. Idaho's nickname is the Gem State because of it's abundance of gems, in particular the star garnet. Although sadly the only gems we found while we were there were a bunch of the rather dubious Confederacy flags in people's front lawns. I wasn't even aware that Idaho was part of the South :S. We were actually only in Idaho for probably 20 or 30 minutes before doing a U-turn back into Wyoming on Highway 89, the road that would now take us all the way to our campsite in Yellowstone, the far northwest of Wyoming.

Rather confusingly, this road seems to have more than several names attached to it, namely Highways 89, 26, 189, 191, and 287, as well as a multitude of other names and numbers assigned to smaller stretches. Whatever road we were on, it would only be another few hours until we reached our destination of Grant Village campsite, hopefully before nightfall as we still had to put up our tents. The nearest town with anyone actually in it before we were to hit the National Parks of Grand Teton and Yellowstone was a place called Jackson. I think there must be 1,001 places in America called Jackson, but this particular one is known as being a base for mountain climbers, skiers, and people who want to visit the two National Parks without actually having to, you know, be in the outdoors for any particular length of time. Jackson is also in close proximity to the National Elk refuge, and to celebrate this, have several huge arches throughout the town made of shed elk antlers.

Just thirty minutes north we entered Grand Teton National Park, and got a ticket from a very friendly woman who said, "Hey! Weekends are free!". The entrance permit covered both Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, and would normally have cost about $25 a car for 7 days. We stopped at Jenny Lake for some photos when we turned a corner and the breathtaking Teton Range seemed to pop-up out of nowhere. Continuing north, we drove past the huge Jackson Lake, that sits at the base of the mountains, which left us with about one more hour until Grant Village. The two National Parks sit right next to each other and merge at the boundaries. In fact I'm not really sure why they are two separate parks, perhaps it has something to do with budgets and finance. Anyhow, we'd barely even entered the parks and the scenery was indescribable.

We finally made it to Grant Village on the west shore of the West Thumb of the gigantic Yellowstone Lake, the largest freshwater lake above 7,000ft in North America. We drove up to the visitor's centre and registered our car. Along with a box of firewood, they handed us a sheet of paper with our campground details on, including a map of the campsite, bear awareness advice, and the name of our home for the next 7 sleeps, C-118. It was way past 8:00pm by then, 12 whole hours since we had flown from New York, and although that doesn't really sound all that late, when you're 7,700ft above sea level, surrounded by the Absaroka sub-range of the Rocky Mountains, it gets quite dark quite early. Being at such a high altitude also meant that the night air was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, which came as quite a shock after being in Utah's hot, dry, arid climate.

It was now a race to get our tents up before nightfall. We seemed to just make it, and the last few pegs hammered into the ground were quite difficult to see. As soon as we'd set up shop, we got started on the campfire and cracked open some beers. We were all completely exhausted after the early start and long journey, especially Melinda who had had to take all of the driving. Everyone was so excited to finally be there, we'd been planning this trip for months, but for me, it was almost like a childhood dream come true. Sadly though, there were no toasted marshmallows, nor was Yogi Bear anywhere to be seen swiping pic-a-nic baskets .

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