When Daddy Fell Into the Pond...

Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
And then there seemed to be nothing beyond,
Then
Daddy fell into the pond!


And everyone's face grew merry and bright,
And Timothy danced for sheer delight.
"Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!
He's crawling out of the duckweed!" Click!


Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,
And doubled up, shaking silently,
And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft,
And it sounded as if the old drake laughed.
Oh, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond
When
Daddy Fell into the pond!


Alfred Noyes

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.

The Black Hills and The Badlands

The weather warmed up as we headed East and the snow turned to rain.  We had a couple of lovely days in the Wind Cave National Park - beautiful rolling downlands that wouldn't look out of place in England, except for the roaming bison and bouncing antelopes.

We drove East towards the Badlands, through Custer and Keystone, stopping at Mount Rushmore to view this iconic symbol of America.

We entered the Badlands National Park from the West, via a little dirt road, and were surprised to find lush grasslands and a perfect campsite. We spent two lazy days, watching the bison, picnicing in the hills and listening to warbling meadowlarks and yapping prairie dogs.

We had plenty of time to explore and hunt for wildlife. The girls were particularly fascinated by a huge toad, but only Tony managed to spot a prairie rattlesnake after nearly tripping over it...it slid into a hole before he could recover enough to get out the camera!

High Passes and Flat Plains

We headed North to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison - billed as yet another 'pocket-sized' Grand Canyon. The weather was unusually poor, so we stayed a night on the rim and explored a couple of the trails the next day.

We drove on East and North through Colorado, stopping in various creek-side camping spots and the Rocky Mountain National Park.  Being early in the season, the campgrounds and roads within the park were mostly closed, but the wildlife was prolific and we spotted deer, elk, moose and pronghorn antelope along the way.

We drove over several 11,000ft passes marking the continental divide and this year's late snowmelt continued to prevent much walking and exploring, but made for beautiful alpine views.

With no long walks and plenty of time around the campsites, the girls tried to put their new-found knowledge of the Navajo into practice by making a skipping rope-and-stick bow and arrow. It was somewhat ineffective, but Tony called his whittling and binding skills into action to produce an almost authentic and certainly more effective version.

We left Colorado yesterday, through the scenic Poudre River Valley and up through the flatter grasslands of East Wyoming. Today we will head into South Dakota to spend some time in the Black Hills and Badlands before turning West again for Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. By way of background reasearch, Francesca is reading Little House on the Prairie and we are hunting down a copy of Calamity Jane.