Saints Super Summer Sojourn Across the States - Day 5
By Jo¤
July 29 2010
Yet another day in the journey across the US taken by Jon (soon to be) in Alaska and his brother, Former Hollywood Saint. Today is another tourist stop in Yellowstone Park, the first national park in the world.
Day 5
So on to a rather confusing day that had me stumped afterall of a few minutes. We wereplanning to go to Yellowstone National Park. The best way to do this was to go from Montana, back intoWyoming and out the side through Idaho and back in to Montana by the end of theday. Confused? At 6am you would be too!
Anyway the four hour trip from the overnight stop in Montanato Wyoming was pretty uneventful. Montana being as known as the "Big Sky State" certainly lives up to thename, and makes it up with a vast expanse of not much at all. As we were getting close, the scenerybecame more bumpy and interesting. The drive through the mountains to Yellowstone itself started to geteventful and culminating in us arriving at the Yellowstone gate for thedeliveries, so we got a telling off by the Ranger. We entered the park at 10am and by 10:05 we had seen ourfirst Elk. First stop was theMammoth Hot Springs. Very hotbubbling pools of water that are still changing today. We overheard one Ranger on his toursaying one new pool started about a year ago.
These hot springs at Yellowstone have only beenactive for a year or so
Navigating past various annoying tourists (American andJapanese, not British, obviously) we made our way around to Tower Falls andCanyon Village Upper and Lower Falls. The latter, we spotted an Osprey nest (not full of Welsh Rugby fans) andas we were taking our paparazzi style photos a crowd started to gather, halfwanting to see this nest, partly to see our photos! We moved on around the Park and after being held up by about400 Bison. Its amazing to thinkthat these animals were close to extinction and now there are several thousandhere and multiplying.
One of the hazards of driving in Yellowstone
We soon found our way to the main event in Yellowstone, OldFaithful. This huge geyser iscalled as such as it goes every 40 minutes to 2 hours. We arrived there and found a place inthe crowd of several hundred people. Another visitor said they had been waiting 45 minutes, so it couldhappen any time. Two minutes laterit blew, to the relief of myself and Jon.
Thar she blows! Old Faithful lives up to itsname...
We made our exit but not to be held up by even more idiotAmericans who decided to slow down at a "Do not slow down" sign. This was a warning for the Bald Eagle protection scheme they have therebut this only caused a two mile jam filled with lots of Americans looking at anempty nest in a tree by the road. We left, and endured a 3 and a half hour journey to the next rest stopin Montana via Idaho. Weeventually arrived at the destination at 23:30.
Our final state (in the lower 48) of the US
It must be mentioned at this point about the game we play inthe US. Every state has its owntype of number plate, each showing the state that it is from. The game basically is to find a numberplate from each of the 50 states. Last time we did this, we got 49, with the odd one out being Hawaii forobvious reasons. It is technicallyimpossible to get it. On thistrip, we are also on 49. However,in Yellowstone we did actually see the Hawaii number plate, which proved to bea minor attraction to a lot of people in the park! Also this game is also now the reason I hate Delaware andeverybody in it.
Tomorrow we leave the US and head even further north in toCanada.
Distance travelled: 3030 miles.
States visited: 16 - ME, NH, MA, NY, PA, OH, IN, MI, IL, WI,MN, IA, SD, WY, MT, Idaho (ID).
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