Our trip from Calgary to Yellowstone involved crossing the Canada / USA border. Most people will have experience of this when you fly to the States. You fill in your IW35 on the plane, you wait in a queue at the airport wondering why it moves so slowly, you then get called to the booth where the very unhappy person asks you a few questions, stamps a few places in your passport and lets you in.
It’s very different in a car if you are a going from Canada to the USA. First of all the queue is massive. Instead of there being just people, there are cars, motorhomes and lorries. Most of the lorries and motorhomes have to be checked for food, milk and goods bought in Canada etc. These rules are the same from when you fly to the States, but they x-ray your luggage and they don’t really expect you to be bringing loads of cheese and fish on a plane. I mention cheese and fish as I saw one of the custom guys carrying a bag full of about 10 massive blocks of cheese and some other guy having an argument with them as he didn’t have a fishing permit to show that he was allowed to catch the fish he had stored in his van. Someone in the customs department ate well that night!
We joined the very long queue, got to the booth in our RV, they took our passports, told us to park up and we waited about 35 mins for the whole process to be completed – and as we were from the UK, it cost $6 each for the privilege.
So we were in the States and on our way to Yellowstone. As it was over 10 hours drive from Calgary, we stopped for the night in Great Falls, where the only thing we did was eat out at night and before departing to Yellowstone, try and see some of these “great falls” but they weren't that great, but the drive did have some good views.
We arrived at our next RV camp late at night and bedded in. The next morning we were up early and raring to go as we had so much to see. A quick stop at the visitors centre to collect maps to learn that the park is over 3,472 square miles and the oldest park in the States then we were off. First stop – the thermal springs area. As we drove up, it looked like there were loads of fires in the distance, but as we got closer, we could see it was the steam coming from these geysers. We parked up and took a walk round to see loads of them bubbling away while stinking of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulphide). It was a very cool place to see and one of the most geothermally ( is that a word?) active places in the world.
Next en route was Old Faithful, a geyser that spurts out between 3,700 and 8,400 gallons of water upto 186 foot in the air and can be predicted to the nearest 15 min of it’s next eruption. We made it with about 25 mins to spare, so took our seats and waited. After a few false starts and a lot of wasted pictures, it blew. As it was very cold, steam covered most of the show, but it was still good to have seen it.
We drove further east through the park, seeing all the areas that have been ravaged by huge forest fires and then around the great lake, which looked more like we were standing on the edge of the ocean! All this took us over 5 hours, and it was time to head back to the park, stopping off to see some otters catching fish and playing in a little lake. We thought that would be the end of our wildlife for the day until we turned a corner and saw a herd of bison right by the side of the road. Cazzie wound the window down to take a few pictures and they started to cross the road right by us. After a few minutes we wanted to leave, so started to pull away when the “daddy” of the group begin making really loud grunting noises and seemed to charge for our van, so I thought sod this and hit the gas!!
After a good night’s sleep in the van we awoke to some pretty bad weather that had closed off most of the routes in the park which meant if we wanted to go a see the rest of the park it was a 3 1/2 hour drive just to get there, so we decided to cut our losses and head to Salt Lake City.
Yellowstone is a great place to visit for a few days. Again, as we were of “off season” West Yellowstone (where we stayed), was quiet with a lot of places closed. I would have loved to have seen all the park, but Mother Nature, who has been very kind to us so far, decided one day was all we were going to get.
A pictures from Yellowstone can be found here. There are a lot, but I am in the process of doing a “highlights” album too – so bear with me!
Stuoobs
xxx
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