US All In

The drive east from Yellowstone was always going to be tough. We had the target of Rushmore to hit though so we pushed on. We set out early enough on the road so as to give us a chance of hitting Rushmore late in the afternoon and staying in Rapid City that night.

The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. The car has been grand but for the fact that we’re spending a good few quid on filling her up each time. With the way we’re heading around to Toronto we should have two nights in Chicago.

It’s 8pm at Yellowstone, 3am Irish time and we’re cruising around Yellowstone Lake. The sun is setting as I type and we’ve captured what should turn out to be some brilliant shots of the moon reflecting off the lake.

After drying ourselves off after rafting we headed back into the park. On the drive through that morning we had encountered a couple of small hot springs but the Mammoth Hot Springs stop off allowed us to truly appreciate what these geysers through up. From there it was around via Tower Fall (lives up to it’s name) and Dunraven Pass (think Lord of the Rings style vistas) to Old Faithful. Apparently it erupts every 90 minutes so we were lucky to only have a 15 minute wait. We wondered why there was free seating where we were but soon realised that the wind takes most of the water erupted over us. The video I took with Paddy’s camera should give some idea as to the chaos that ensued. Let me tell you this though, Japanese tourists move fast.

As for wildlife within the park, we saw three or four buffalo, one particularly up close. We also caught a lot of Elk and there might have a Moose in there too. I’ll definitely come back to Yellowstone. The place is awe-inspiring. It’s really hard to get a sense of scale to it but consider this. I drove for 3 hours today and covered about half of the park in an S shape, Dar is now back in the driver’s seat and he’ll have done 2 and a half hours by the time we reach COdy. Now I know why they call it “Big Sky Country”.

This morning we set out from the town of West Yellowstone. The town is located just before the park entrance and wasn’t too much of a drive up from Twin Falls, Idaho. Dar took the first stint driving in and we headed for the town of Gardiner just outside the North Gate. We’d booked in to go white water rafting and this was an activity we were all eagerly anticipating.

After a few safety announcements and the gear kit out we headed for Yellowstone River. Our boat was just myself, Paddy, Dar, an English couple - Simon and Sandra and our guide/bloke-who-knows-what-to-do, Chris. After an initial quiet period on the river the rapids appeared and we duly got quite wet while trying to stay in the boat. The rapids weren’t as high as they would be earlier in the year but it was really enjoyable none the less and great craic of a Sunday morning.