Dodgy Geysers

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming,
Tuesday 31st July- Thursday 2nd August

After a night spent camping in the old mining town of Butte in Montana, where I witnessed a fantastic sunset that coloured the sky in shades of blood orange, purple and pink, the following day we headed for Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, the oldest National Park in the US.

That afternoon we bathed in the Gardner River hot springs where the rapid currents and hot water streams provided some relaxation for our aching limbs.

The continual shifts in water temperature in the river was also evidence that even mother nature had long been unable to achieve the feat of hot and cold water being unable to run concurrently alongside one another to produce a consistent warm temperature, long before humankind had invented the electric shower to achieve a similar effect.

We then went to visit probably the most famous feature of the park, Old Faithful. The world renowned geyser and tourist attraction that propels a stream of boiling water into the atmosphere approximately every 90 minutes.

In addition to Old Faithful Yellowstone National Park is home to more geysers than an episode of Eastenders, and the following day we went to visit several of the considerably more pungent sulphuric geysers that are located in the park.

The presence of wildlfe such as bear, elk, and the herds of bison meant that the journey around the park often felt like a safari tour, where visitors would rather foolishly stop and leave their vehicles in the middle of the road whenever they saw such 'attractions'.

No doubt forgetting that they were encountering potentially dangerous and temperemental undomesticated animals and not some man dressed up as Mickey Mouse at Disney Land.

Although we did not undertake any significant trails or hikes in Yellowstone during the days we were there we did see various features that have made the location famous, including the yellow stone canyon from which it obtained its name.

Cody, Wyoming, Thursday 2nd August- Friday 3rd August

On the Thursday we drove to the replica Wild West town of Cody in Wyoming.

Cody is famous for the exploits of soldier, showman and indiscriminate slayer of the idigenous occupiers of the land, be it buffalo or the Native Americans, Buffalo Bill.

Like many of the tourist focused locations we had visited in the US, Cody had the feeling of a town constructed to an artificial ideal of the Western plains.

Whilst I did not get the opportunity to visit the actual replica old town located in Cody, I did visit the Buffalo Bill Museum and the main street consisting of saloon bars and gift shops from where further 'essential' purchases of novelty items were made.

Custer State Park, South Dakota,Friday 3rd August- Saturday 4th August

En route to our campsite in Custer State Park in South Dakota, or SODAK, we made a brief visit to Devil's Tower, a large rock of solidified magma that had once been contained within a now long eroded and disappeared volcano.

The rock itself is perhaps now most associated with Steven Speilberg's film 'Third Encounters of the Close Kind'.

Luckily for us the short trek around the around the rock wasn't as boring as the film.

After our visit to Devil's Tower we then stopped at another replica Wild West town, Deadwood.

Famous for legendary figures such as Calamity Jane, rather than the hard drinking fast living stetson wearing cowboys of a previous era, the town was now temporarily resident to hard drinking fast living leather clad bikers en route to the nearby Sturgis motorcycle convention.

It had now been perhaps a month since we had encountered any significant rainfall, but as the heavens opened as we set up camp in Custer State Park that evening my only thoughts were "only one more week of camping..."