Geysers and Grizzlies

Before we left South Dakota, we called in at Deadwood, home to Calamity Jane and the final resting place of 'Wild Bill' Hicock (who was shot whilst playing cards in one of the local bars).

Continuing through the Black Hills, singing all the way, we parked up at Spearfish Canyon for the night and used the next morning to walk a quiet trail through the woods and meadows where scenes from 'Dances With Wolves' were filmed.

Continuing with a movie theme, we crossed into Wyoming, again, and made for the Devil's Tower, the setting for 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'.

We spent the next couple of days driving across Wyoming, stopping in the Bighorn Mountains and resting up in the wilderness beside some fossilised dinosaur footprints which were fascinating, but not photogenic!  After stocking up in Cody, we drove through the Shoshone National Forest into the Northeast Entrance of the Yellowstone National Park. The park is so huge, that it was 3 days before we saw a geyser, and we had to make do with waterfalls and wolves...

On the subject of water, the weather was decidedly iffy, but we forged ahead with the 5 mile Beaver Ponds Loop walk and got soaked to the skin, twice! Our reward was the sighting of a black bear in the forest - Liberty, however, didn't see it this way and was absolutely petrified...

In between showers, Tony and Francesca went fishing in the Gibbon and Firehole rivers. Francesca caught her first ever fish (a brown trout caught on a pheasant tail nymph), but she was disappointed about the catch and release rules which meant no fish for supper!

Finally we found the geysers, hot springs and pools for which Yelowstone is so well known. We also found full campsites and hoardes of school age children emerging for the holidays.  The girls were delighted to find some new friends to play with.

Having had our fill of thermal activity, we moved on to the Grand Tetons National Park, which adjoins Yellowstone to the South. The scenery here is very different - soaring mountains and glacial valleys.

We made the most of the good weather by taking a boat across Jenny Lake and walking up the Cascade Canyon as far as the snow would allow. We were lucky to see a moose and grizzly bear - Liberty considered herself particularly lucky that we were in the car when we spotted the grizzly!

We are just leaving Victor, Idaho, after two nights of R&R, on our way to the Craters of the Moon National Monument and the Sawtooth Mountains. We are also starting to firm up plans for our return trip via Australia as Tony has had a posting confirmed, to Scotland in October.