Grand Tetons

After driving through a snow storm (would you believe it) we arrived at the Jenny Lake campground. It's still early in the season but after our experience in Zion and Arches with campgrounds I was expecting it to be full but was pleasantly surprised, loads of choice of sites. We set up home before heading out to the visitors centre to gain some info on the locality. Surprise, surprise if we wanted to use the boat shuttle you have to pay and it wasn't cheap so we decided to go for a walk along the lake side instead. We were armed with the 'bear bell' to warn them we were coming and enjoyed a few hours strolling along the shoreside. We even spotted what we though was a beaver but now believe to be a marmot (similar but different tails) hard to tell from a distance. We walked onto a smaller lake and sat to appreciate the scenery in the glorious sunshine. After tea and a bonfire we went into the local town Jackson Hole, spotting wildlife on the way. A peaceful night with no bears just little pika running in and out of their burrows. The following day we decided to head back to Jackson Hole to have a proper look around and fill the car up. It's a beautiful place but definitely a millionaires paradise. We stretched to a Starbucks coffee and cake to warm us up as it was quite chilly before heading off to Yogi bears home wood! 

Crazy weather coming over the mountains from Arches National Park to Jackson Hole, Grand Tetons

What do you think, beaver or marmot?

This was his dam, if he was a beaver. 

Elk just outside the campground at dusk

Despite wishing for a clear sky we never saw all of the Tetons without cloud

Yellowstone - The Worlds First National Park

Yellowstone was outstanding big scenery and lots of wide animals. Buffalo were nearly everywhere. We have never seen one before let alone in the wide so this was a treat. Can't tell you how impressive these animals are, big enough to ram the car and make a mess of it. Unfortunately, some people just try to get to close and irritate them. One occasion a herd of buffalo were walking across the road and a Chinese family dragged their youngest child, scared out of its mind, in front of the beast for a photo. Thankfully it didn't trample the child but swung its head away in disgust and trotted away. Earlier in the day we had watch the visitor video at the national park centre which included a home video of a family member being trampled by an angry buffalo. 

One morning we walked out of camp early to look at the wildlife on our way back through the wood we stumbled on an elk, they are about 8 or 9 feet tall when stood fully erect. Anyway  we swiftly did an about turn and left it well alone. But what a sight we were just about a cars length away before we saw it. 

Herd of buffalo with the Yellowstone geysers behind 

(tried to wait for a bald eagle to land on one of there backs but it just didn't happen!)

Of course we had to go to Old Faithful and watch it erupt. It made for a perfect lunch stop. The park is full of geysers in fact it's one great big caldera with three massive eruptions in the last few million years.  Some of the geothermal pools are rich colourful ones and others are smelly sulphur stink pots. Each could be right next door to each other. 

Old Faithful blowing off!

Another rainbow, this one was caused by the steam from Old Faithful

Sarah found it so interesting she fell asleep in this selfie!

Pretty patterns in the pools

After spending a hot day in the park we returned to the tent to find that it had been blasted with hailstone yet we had only been within a 30 mile radius. More freaky weather. 

The animals roam in and around the pools we found these footprints in one

Of course Yellowstone isn't just famous for its geysers it has enormous waterfalls with its own Grand Canyon with yellow stone walls. I guess that's why early trappers and native Indian people's called it Yellowstone. 

Arches National Park

The last of the desert national parks before we travel up to Great Tetons NP. We struggled to find a campsite near the park so settled for one a little further away that was busy with boys toys ( All Terrain Vehicles  - ATV's) we had to laugh they even used them to drive to the washrooms from there RV's, upscale motorised wheelchairs. Anyway enough winging. This park is named for exactly what is contains, some amazing rock arches. It's all down to the rock types and there makeup. The weathering then works on them over thousands of years to drill potholes that then expand through further erosion and fracturing to form arches. 

This ones called landscape arch

Sarah offering her support, holding this one up. 

We had a lot of rain this day in the park

Delicate arch

The arches have collapsed a long time ago here. This set of rocks is called a parade of elephants, two parents and one baby. With imagination, when you were there you could see it!

This is called Double arch. In fact it's three potholes that have collapsed into a double hole this was our favourite one. 

We really have been in the Wild West but horse and wagon have been replaced with ATVs instead.

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon - our favourite place so far here in the U.S. The place is beautiful with views  across the open plains deep in the rift between the valley walls. It's made up of several types of rock but it's the sandstone and limestone mixed with iron and manganese that gives all of this area the deep red colour and the contrasting whites and blacks visible across the plain. 

On the drive to Bryce we passed an area called Red Canyon and just after saw this interesting rainbow in the sky.  We've never seen this happen before it appears to have formed the stripe in the centre of a small cloud formation. No rain just hot weather, who knows why!

The pillars of rock stretch out into the canyon and down to its base some 600 to 1000 feet below at this point. The images probably don't portray this amazing place satisfactorily but hopefully you can get a sense of it from these few pictures. In the evening we attended a presentation from the local ranger about astronomy. Bryce has perfectly dark skies the only problem was it got so dark that ourselves and another couple we got to know couldn't find our way back to the campsite. It took us a few false trails and a hour or so walking to get back to the tent. 

This one is called Queen Victoria's garden, I wonder why?

Zion

This was our first stop in the mid west, it's about 4 hours drive from Las Vegas but we were a little worried we would not be a ble to get a camping spot as there are only two campsites available and you are not allowed to camp in the national park anywhere else. It turned out on arrival that both camp sites were full but with a little pleading with the park ranger she gave us a spot. Shortly after pitching the tent we had a small herd of mule deer come within 10 feet of us eating the grass. 

The cacti below looked really beautiful so we decided to share them with you 

The next day and our only full day here we spent walking and jumping on and off the free shuttle bus to all the places we wished to visit. Daytime in this area of the west is hot even at this time of year, evenings can be cool with temps below freezing. 

On our way out of the canyon the following day we drove through a series of steep switch-backs finally driving through a tunnel cut through the heart of mountain. Once at the top of the canyon we took a short hike to some point or other that I can't remember the name of right now and looked back on the route out of Zion Canyon you can see the vista in the image below. 

There were so many things to see, obviously you need to like landscape and rock to appreciIate it I guess, but the patterns were amazing,  One area called the Chequerboard Mesa was symmetrically crossed horizontally and vertically with distinct lines making a chequer board pattern,  another entire mountain looked like slow poured vanilla and strawberry blamange with the soft ripples flowing down the shallow sides it looked so nice you could reach out and eat it. Sorry we didn't take pictures of these on the iPhone just with the camera. 

Helen I put my favourite traveling shit on again' 

Vegas

On arrival in Las Vegas I am afraid we went to sleep at about 6:30pm in the evening................

Light weights aren't we? Well we had been awake for 35 hours after driving back to Miami through the night to catch our plane to Vegas at 7:30am. We said lets just close our eyes for  half an hour and then we'll decided what to do, well that half an hour turned out to be 14 hours, so at 8:30am the next day we woke up and had breakfast. 

It's a very superficial but glitzy city. About a 2 mile stretch along Las Vegas Boulevard from the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign to the Wynn Encore, which incidentally has a golf course in its back yard, after that it goes down hill. It probably sounds really bad but imagine Blackpool and 'Kiss Me Quick' hats neither would have been out of place if plonked in Vegas. 

Can you guess which hotel this is?

We only bet about $20 in total all the time we were there and lost all of it. I won more in Australia!

After my critique above I do have to say that all the big resort casinos have interesting attractions to attract you in including fountain displays outside the Bellagio, volcano eruptions at the Mirage and the Venician with its singing gondolas. All of them have exclusive shops like Louis Vitton, Cartier, Henry Winston (crazily prices diamonds and such). Sarah looked, only! We took in the Michael Jackosn One, Cirque du Soliel show at Mandalay Bay which was excellent. I counted 5 Cirque du Soliel shows permenantly playing in Las Vegas. Donny and Marie Osmund also had a show rated the best for 3 years in a row, not sure who did the rating though. Didn't fancy that one even though Crazy Horses by the Osmonds was the first single I can remember buying as a kid. 

Ciaran we took this picture for you but it's only a side on view as the character wanted $5 to have his picture taken. We also passed Batman, Spider-Man (with a beer belly), a Transformer, a man and woman with very little on, Homer Simpson, the singing Cowboy in his underpants (we last saw him in New York a few years ago), Elmo gambling, Mini Mouse and Elsa (sorry girls no photo didn't have the phone with us a the time). 

Olaf must be magic because he didn't melt in the heat.