The Wilds of Wyoming

With fresh oil and a quick health-check, Grayham was ready to take us into the Bighorn Mountains of north-central Wyoming. We quit stopping to gawk at the breathtaking views after about the sixth scenic overlook off the road in as many miles – suffice it to say the climb to 10,000 ft above sea-level was quite spectacular. There was even snow on the ground in places around our campsite!

On our first night in the mountains, an uninvited guest caused a bit of a stir in the campsite. An enormous moose wandered across our neighbours' pitch, sending everyone rushing to their tents for their cameras, and then as he got too close for comfort, rushing to their cars for safety!

Over two days we hiked to two impressive waterfalls and a native American historic site known as the Medicine Wheel. The Medicine Wheel is rather like the various stone circles one finds dotted around England – it's basically a bunch of cryptically arranged rocks on some inaccessible hillside that is much hyped by guide-books and hardcore hikers, but is actually pretty darn dull when you get out there (though no-one ever says it out loud)!

We mustn't grumble though - we've been wowed by majestic mountain vistas at every turn and the alpine meadows are currently in riotous bloom. The short snow-free season means that the flowering shrubs all don their finery at once, around now.

The dramatic descent from the snowcapped Bighorn Mountains led us into the stifling heat of the Bighorn Canyon – all within a 30 mile drive! After one night cooking in the Canyon we moved on to Cody (named for its founder William “Buffalo Bill” Cody), where we stocked up on fodder for our forthcoming trip into in nearby Yellowstone (god bless Walmart!).

Our entrance to Yellowstone through the Shoshone National Forest was dramatised by a forest fire burning off to the right-hand side of the road. Once we were in Yellowstone, we spent 9 days touring the 85 mile loop road around the park. Although Yellowstone has some great mountainous terrain (the photo shows us atop one of the most scenic peaks), the two main attractions of the park are the hydrothermal features and the wildlife, the sheer abundance of both of which took us by surprise.

Much of Yellowstone sits over the Caldera of a still active super-volcano that last erupted 650,000 years ago, covering a fair chunk of North America in ash and lava. Today, where cracks permeate the thin crust of the caldera, water seeps in and is heated by the underlying magma. The hot water and steam produced are then ejected above ground through one of the 10,000 hydrothermal features in the park. The form of these ejections varies depending on the pressure and temperature of the water. From the countless hydrothermal features we saw, it seems that every imaginable combination of size, colour, viscosity and violence is possible. But there's one thing that all the hydrothermal features have in common...

be it a colourful hot spring...

or a steaming fumarole (like this one that had opened up in the car park!)...

or a burping, bubbling mudpot...

or a majestic geyser, like Old Faithful himself...

THEY ALL STINK!!

Yes, the stench of hard-boiled eggs pervades Yellowstone, which is probably just as well, as none of the campsites have showers!

As for the wildlife, it seems there's a critter at every turn. In and around Yellowstone we've seen moose, elk, deer and bison by the truck-load as well as the odd coyote, muskrat, marmot, black bear and even a grizzly bear. Wolves are the only large mammal that has evaded us thus far. And for any other biology geeks out there, Thermus aquaticus (of Taq fame) was first discovered here, among the thermophiles in the hot springs of Yellowstone (for non-geeks, this bacterium helped make modern DNA experimentation possible).

Our next stop is Grand Teton National Park, which adjoins Yellowstone to the south. Hopefully it won't be so long until our next post, as there seems to be more WiFi potential here!