Utah & Yellowstone

We drove through Montana, Idaho and on to Utah. In Montana, pick-up trucks got bigger and more numerous. There are a healthy number of watering holes in Montana; on our first night in a village of 200 people, there was a choice of three bars. As for faded glory or a wounded nation, there is no sign of that in Montana - a large number of U.S. flags fly most everywhere.

At Zion National Park, we were welcomed by rain and hail. On day one, we came across a rattlesnake and three wild turkeys; it was an auspicious start. We clambered up precipitous viewpoints, waded through chest deep water up the Virgin Narrows and walked the Subway (no trains). It's all wow! Zion NP was once called Mukuntuweap National Monument and had a trickle of visitors. Nowadays, three million visitors arrive at Zion. What a difference a name makes.

We settled into a routine of exploring slot canyons, arches, natural bridges and bizarre rock formations. At the busy, iconic locations (Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches), campgrounds filled early and we got off to early starts to secure a campsite and to enjoy the trails before the crowds arrived. In other less known places (Coyote Buttes, Kodachrome Basin, Southern Capitol Reef), we had places to ourselves. More wow!

All through Southern Utah, the PT performed well, accumulating plenty of dust on gravel roads, though we could not pass over sharp angles washes in our low-clearance "truck". Please don't tell the rental company!

The latter part of our American incursion was in North West Wyoming, first in the Grand Teton National Park, where a herd of bison greeted us on arrival. After a curious moose encounter and a stomp across snow fields, we pushed on to a dawn assault on Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone was once called "Coulter's Hell" (imagine walking shoe-less and naked for 200 miles with a Indian tribe chasing after you and you start to get the idea), but it was wisely renamed Yellowstone and tourism has never looked back. Old Faithful was reliable as ever and we cruised through vast areas of geo-thermal activity. Yellowstone has more geo-thermal features (10,000) than the rest of the world combined. If bubbling, squeaking, boiling, steaming, belching, hissing, exploding, spurting are your thing, then Yellowstone is your place.

Yellowstone continually surprised. The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon was a visual feast. The Lamar Valley is considered as the Serengeti of the Americas with good reason; herds of bison and plenty of antelopes. Walks in Yellowstone revealed astonishing wildlife numbers and each geo-thermal basin had its own personality and offered oddities, sometimes appearing like chemical waste.