Want all the toys
Saturday was my final day in Seattle. First stop, Pike Place Market yet again for a brunch of currywurst. Om nom nom.
After that, I took a stroll across to Union Lake, which is kind of pretty.
It also happens to be home to the Museum of History and Industry, where I spent the rest of the day playing with interactive displays. They had an excellent exhibition about toys from the 50s through 80s on, which meant I got to play with Slinky.
Yes. I am a child. Deal with it.
Oh, and another tiny display of Microsoft related things. Including these floppy disks. Any readers remember the really huge ones? 3.5 inch ones were just on the way out when I was at school.
That is pretty much all I did with my Saturday. I had wanted to have an early night since I'd be spending about 24 hours on a bus in the near futre, but that plan was thwarted by the Night Market going on across the street from the hostel. I'm not sure why the Night Market warranted thumping bass-heavy music, but apparently it did. Ugh.
Where is the bus?
At any rate, I managed to wake up early enough to catch my 9am bus. The drive out of Seattle was lovely - out through the mountains - but once we got beyond that it turned into pretty bland rolling yellow hills. High point of the initial drive was going through Yakima, which long-forgotten GCSE Geography lessons taught me suffered from ashfall during the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens.
Despite my initial excitement, that mountain turned out to be Mount Adams, not St Helens. Damn.
The bus then booted us all out in the middle of nowhere, aka Stanfield, Oregon, to await our connection. Seriously, middle of nowhere. Look.
I have no idea where the town/village/farm is in relation to this service station. We should have been waiting about 20 minutes. 40 at the most. The bus finally turned up an hour later. And then the driver proceeded to take a half hour break while the half-dozen of us poor buggers who'd come from Seattle stood around in confusion.
Anyway, we made it onto the bus in the end. Bearing in mind this was at nearly 5pm and we'd left Seattle at just after 9am. Boredom was setting in as anyone who's seen my Facebook feed for the period could have guessed...
Sometime after 10pm (or was it 11?) we arrived in Boise, Idaho and state number 4 on my trek, where we proceeded to wait another 45 minutes for the bus to be cleaned. So bored. So tired. Dreading at this point that I wouldn't be able to sleep on the bus.
Apparently I needn't have worried. Once we were back on the bus, I fell asleep almost straight off and stayed that well until just before we arrived in Salt Lake City just after 7am the next morning.
I slept on a bus. Oh my god.
Dancing coffee cups
I spent my Monday in Salt Lake. Most of that time, from memory, was spent in Starbucks or McDonalds, downing caffeine like there was no tomorrow. My somewhat sleep brain found this very amusing, since Salt Lake City is the heart of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormons and Mormons aren't supposed to drink tea or coffee.Unfortunately, I'm also a huge fan of the musical The Book of Mormon, which addresses the above doctrine in a song called Spooky Mormon Hell Dream using dancing Starbucks cups... which in my sleep-addled state filled my brain.
This was even more hilarious when I decided to check out Temple Square and had a chat with a lovely young lady named Sister Gunther who kindly gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon and also asked if I'd seen the musical. I admitted that I'd had various songs from it stuck in my head all day, to which her response was "yes, my friend told me it was catchy." She didn't seem offended, at least.
Temple Square is actually a pretty cool area. Here is the Temple, which as a non-Mormon more than likely going to a firey hell, I'm not allowed in.
I also visited the Church History Museum. Very interesting, although I did have to resist the urge to laugh at certain things. That would have been rude and disrespectful. Some of the early history is pretty bizarre though - another testament, written on golden plates in an unknown language and script? Okay... Here is an early print of the Book.
While perusing the book selection in the shop I got talking to a couple from the Church who were fascinated by my Englishness and offered to take me to lunch. It was very sweet of them, but I worried we'd end up having a discussion about my religious beliefs (which are non-existent) and so I tried to politely turn them down. They were quite persistent.
Bless. They probably wanted to save my soul or something...
After many more hours mooching around or drinking tea wherever I could get my hands on it, I finally got on another bus. Yes. Another bus. Off one in the morning, onto the next one at 10pm.
This one took me as far as Rexburg, ID and then I had to spend 3 hours waiting in the lobby of a hotel where a friendly staff member offered me breakfast. Lovely lady.
When I finally got onto the next connecting bus, I was knackered. I hadn't slept as well on the way to Rexburg and had only managed an hour or so at the hotel, so I wasn't all that surprised when I awoke at West Yellowstone, 2 hours after leaving the hotel with aches in weird places because I'd clearly fallen asleep as soon as I got in the seat.
It's fucking freezing
West Yellowstone is not within Yellowstone National Park. It sits in Montana, just a mile or so from the park entrance. Indeed, it's the main gateway into the park. I'd like to say that's why I chose it, but it's not - it's just the only place I could find almost reasonably priced accomodation, courtesy of the Madison Hotel which has a couple of dorm rooms.
Pretty cool place, the Madison - it's one of the earliest hotels catering to the park and in the early days even hosted a couple of presidents of the USA.
Anyway, I was too knackered to do much that first day and despite a suggestion from the lady at the hotel desk of a walk down to the river, it was much too cold venture out. There was snow on the fricking mountains. Instead, I first visited one of the tour companies to get a trip planned into the park and then checked out a film about the park at the IMAX. Not too bad.
The Yellowstone Historic Center Museum was much more interesting. It's housed in the old Union Pacific train depot from the days when most of the park's visitors came in by rail. Really fascinating little place and great for killing a few hours. Covers everything from the park's foundation in 1872 to the 1959 earthquake at Hebgen Lake and the devastating 1988 wildfires.
That's Snaggletooth the bear, once a famous fixture in the park until 2 idiots inexplicably shot him.
I then spent the evening reading and trying to convince my brain to go to bed at a sensible time so as not to bugger up my body clock. Somehow I succeeded...
Get him, Bison, get him
On my second day in West Yellowstone, I took a bus trip into the park, driven and guided by the excellent Laurie. Yellowstone is beautiful. Really, stunningly beautiful. There's wildlife everywhere, from elk grazing by the Madison river.
To bison calmly sitting in the many meadows alongside the road.
Of course, with the wildlife so close by, it makes for some great photo opportunities. It also makes for human stupidity. Such as the guy we spotted taking a photo of a bison at the side of the road. He was out of his car. The bison was maybe 5 metres away. They might look dopey, but they can run fucking quick when they feel like it.
Laurie up front started chanting "get him, bison, get him" before we spotted a ranger coming down the road ready to chase the guy back into his car. Stupid man,
We stopped at several of the park's famous hydrothermal features during the day. One of my favourites was the Fountain Paint Pots area, not so much for the features themselves, although they were awesome, but for these trees.
They're known as bobby socks trees because of the white patch at the bottom of the trunks. They're dead, killed off when the hot, acidic water from the nearby hot springs changed course and flowed around them. The dead trees still soaked up some of the water, which is rich in silicate minerals and this turned their bases white.
Of course, this being Yellowstone, we also had to check out Old Faithful, the most famous geyser in the park.
I finally got that photo after waiting about half an hour. It's pretty impressive - the eruptions last about 3-5 minutes on average. Glad I arrived well before the predicted eruption time though - look at the crowd.
Also, contrary to popular belief, Old Faithful isn't all that faithful. It goes off every 92 minutes on average, but that's give or take 10 minutes, hence why I made sure I got there early.
Brits looking for good geysers - go to Iceland. Strokkur goes off every 10 minutes more or less. Means less time standing out in the cold.
Our final big stop for the day was at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. And yes. It is grand and it's a canyon. It's also likely where the Yellowstone River, for which the park is named, got its name.
It's yellow. No filters required. All that hydrothermal activity has chemically altered and stained the rocks over the years and now the whole canyon is streaked with these amazing colours.
So, yeah, Yellowstone is beautiful. I need to go back when I get a chance. There's so much more of the park to explore.
You're back again!
I spent my final day in quaint West Yellowstone exploring the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Centre. The centre operates as both an educational facility, bringing people up to speed with the habits and dangers of bears and wolves and also as a rescue centre for bears removed from the park and surrounding areas for safety reasons. The wolves came from a breeding facility for movies. Poor things. They're gorgeous creatures.
The bears also help out with testing supposedly bear-proof containers. I'm sure this sleeping looking dude could get into most coolers in a matter of seconds if there was something yummy smelling in it.
Despite being a pretty small place, I spent a good 4 hours there. OK, so that might be partly because I got into a staring contest with one of the wolves...
But I also went to three of the naturalist talks, where I met this lovely owl, who is tiny.
And this gorgeous rough-legged hawk.
Oh, yeah, the centre rescues birds too. They have a trio of bald eagles who reminded me very much of the vultures in The Jungle Book...
Not a bad way to spend my last day in the area. After that, I took a brief walk around the historic part of town, which included the pretty cool Dining Lodge that was owned by the Union Pacific to feed the many rail passengers when they got off the train.
Also, this row of buildings which includes my hotel.
Looks just like something out of the Old West. Much of it is original, having been built in the early 1900s.
Sadly, I had to abandon the town to get yet another bus back to Rexburg. The 2 hour journey was rather more interesting than the one inbound, given that I was more awake and also the only one on the bus, so I ended up having a conversation with my driver who mostly wanted to know about differences between the US and UK. I tried to explain the concept of the monarchy and the Royal Family, but I'm not sure he quite got it.
And then I had to spend 6 hours in the hotel lobby at Rexburg waiting for my connection. There was no mention of this when I booked the ticket, otherwise I might have booked a different bus. Fortunately, one of the staff members said I was welcome to help myself to the free hot drinks and then the friendly lady from my previous visit popped in again. Her response was "you're back again!" Followed by a suggestion that I should try to get some sleep. She also said it was nice to see me again, which was a lovely little comment for my sleepy brain.
Screaming children, everywhere
At any rate, I got my bus and arrived back in sunny and hot Salt Lake City bright and early on Friday morning. I wasn't able to leave my bag at the hostel, so I had to lug it onto the Trax light rail and take it with me on the suprisingly long trip up the hillside to the Natural History Museum of Utah.That place is awesome. I was expecting a pretty small museum, since it seems to be attached to the university. It's actually quite a big place - I easily spent 4 or 5 hours there. The collection includes a great selection of fossils, courtesy of Utah's famous fossil beds. Here is a wall of ceratopsian skulls.
Harold was not impressed about nearly being fed to a Deinosuchus...
There's also loads of interactive displays. I would have played with them a bit more, but the place was crawling with school kids. Obnoxious, rude school kids who didn't understand the concept of not pushing and actually giving other people a turn.
Also, the small child who pretty much shoved me out of the way so he could play with a thing about the tree of life that was way beyond his age range. Yeah, kid, if you know the terms eukarya, archaea and prokarya at the age of 4, then I'll accept that you'll understand this display.
I am not at all annoyed because a tiny child stopped me from playing with the geekery...
As always, I found the one gallery not full of children was the small minerals and gem section. Apparently kids aren't interested in shiny rocks.
There's pretty good views from the terraces around the museum as well. If you squint, you might be able to pick out Great Salt Lake towards the right hand side of this photo.
Unfortunately, the haze made it a bit difficult to photograph anything with any precision. I know the lake is there, but even without looking through the camera it only showed up as a faintly blue sheen through the haze.
Tomorrow I have one more day to spare in Salt Lake City and then I'm on my way south to Monterey in California where I hope to go whale watching.
Just got to survive 2 more days of buses first...
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