Some of the photos have been left without captions so that you can think of your own. This gets me out of trouble with the Nav for being childish.

Ahh - from one of our camps up a mountain in Montana

 

 

I may have said before, this trip is not a holiday; in fact, some of it is quite hard work. Deciding which route to take or what to see and what to miss can be very taxing.  But, after Alaska, we had a holiday. The Athletic Daughter came out from England to do some high intensity, high altitude training to prepare her for the Great North Run and the Best Boy took some time off from his “staying with friends” on the ranch.

Fred Mueller of Big Horn
 the world's expert Allis-Chalmers tractor man
and rope master

Some of his collection

 

Bringing the cattle off the mountains - Big Horn Wyoming

A real cowboy (a real poser)

 

My first-equal favourite sister looked after us again and we had some much needed R-n-R. With the demountable demounted, the truck did a mini road-trip through the Big Horn Mountains, Yellowstone, The Tetons and back to Big Horn. The truck thought it was great and we did too. It was the first time we had been together for about a year and a half and we had a great laugh. We stayed in the worst-motel-in-the-world in Cody, the  “Uptown Motel”.  Avoid it like the plague if I was you. We had been joking on the way to it that it would be like those cheap motels in the filums – blood-stained carpet, stash of loot hidden and a shoot-out. We had the blood stain (huge and still with a chalk out-line around it) and we found some money AND we had fleas and the lights didn’t work and.... etc. The other place we stayed in was equally unlike us; a “Kampgrounds Of America” log cabin. It was ok and smelt of disinfectant.

Yellowstone - nice eh?

This IS a wolf

Follow this car

 

Jenny Lake in the Tetons

The point was that we should see the sights of Yellowstone and some animals and not argue. We achieved all of these and some snaps are provided to prove it. Just as well on the arguing front as I’m not sure that flailing around with my arm while driving, trying to reach to smack a whinging child in the back would work quite as well as it used to in Lesotho. I think I would probably get thumped back and would ‘put my shoulder out’. (actually, it was never very effective in Africa, either).  Anyhow, we all had a great time, H got back to his parties and S got back to do really well in the GNR. She came 3^rd and set a new under 12s record! She also raised a fortune for the Lord’s Taverners – brill.
 

A bunch of happy holiday-makers

Lower Falls Yellowstone River

Having ditched the nippers it was time to start the last leg of North America. The plan was to work our way over to the North West and then the West Coast, the Canyons and on down to cross into Mexico. To start this master plan we had to go back through Yellowstone National Park. It is perhaps the most famous and one of the most spectacular of all the American parks and therefore has shed-loads of tourists. Despite this, it is still a definite must on anyone’s route. The Nav and I were lucky to see eight wolves some of them hunting. Sadly the only one that I could take a snap of was quite far away but I include it anyway so that my reader can make his normal comments about it “that’s not a wolf far away – that’s a Chihuahua close-up” etc. On the subject of wolves, it’s worth noting when you visit Yellowstone, that there is a Parks Service wolf expert who drives around in a yellow Nissan while conducting his surveys and Chihuahua spotting. So, many people “in the know” don’t look for wolves but keep an eye open for yellow Nissans as a key indicator. It’s not as easy as it sounds as there is only one yellow Nissan and the park is 46 million square miles (I made that fig. up as I can’t find my bit of paper about it. All other figs. are accurate). I would imagine there is some confusion when a mong-like tripper from Milwaukee turns up in his yellow Japanese car and finds an 18 mile tail-back behind him for the duration of his “wilderness experience”.  

Halsteads Fire

Lake George Mt Rainier Nat Pk

 

Idaho (The Potato State) was eagerly anticipated for its unspoilt spectacular scenery and, of course, spuds. We didn’t see a single one, not even in a shop, not even in a field. Why do they call it that? The countryside that we drove through didn’t  look very suitable for much apart from driving through and looking at. This we did. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t dull, in fact we really enjoyed it; it was just that we had been looking forward to some top tatties. We did drive right past one of the America’s biggest wildfires this year – Halstead. It had a small town of fire gangs set up nearby and all they could really do was try to contain it by back-burning.  It is a long-term business managing these huge fires; this one had been burning for a couple of months and the smoke was reaching the other side of Wyoming. They (the fire gangs) apparently quite like it as it keeps them in chewing tobacco and whiskey.
 

Mt Rainier

 Our short-term goal at this point was Mount Rainier National Park as I had become aware of a small hill nearby with a good name. Mount R, itself was a very spectacular snow-capped volcano and we took a short hike of about 14 miles and 6000 feet to get a breathtaking view of it. We felt quite a sense of achievement which wasn’t at all diminished by the knowledge that many thousands try to climb Mt R every year (and some make it).
 

The fire lookout on....

 




Mt St Helens looking peaceful - it used to be a lot bigger.

This turned out to be the first of a series of volcanoes. The next was the infamous Mount St Helens. Even I had heard of that, despite only getting O level geog. It was a very popular tourist spot but was well worth it. I won’t go into the details of exactly what happened in May 1980, that would spoil the surprise when you go and visit it. Suffice it to say, the term pyroclastic flow comes into it. The ash cloud went even further that the Idaho wildfire’s smoke. In fact it went right round the world in 15 days. The Nav, who has A level jog, was very keen on it all – so was I. There were 57 poor souls killed during that “VEI 5 event” (as they like to call it). If it was to go pop in the same sort of way again, there would be thousands lost, nearly all from the visitor centre.  If you feel a bit disappointed that you may not be able to afford a trip to Mt St H soon and are interested in facts and figures (like wot I am) then you will be fascinated to learn that the energy release of the event was 24 megatons of thermal energy and that 4 billion board feet of timber were destroyed. That’s enough to build about 298,000 American houses (or about 10 better quality Brit ones).

A few days later we camped a couple of nights on the summit of our very own small volcano in the   Umpqua & Winema National Forest. It took a fair amount of low range rock-crawling to get the truck up it but – there we were, above all the surrounding forest and all alone; it was a great spot and it didn’t go bang. We stayed there in order to do a quick drive past of Crater Lake a famous and much visited flooded caldera. It was very spectacular and is the world’s 7^th deepest lake with 4.6 trillion gallons of rain and snow melt.

our own little volcano top (tea time)

 

Crater Lake

The next on our tourist itinerary of West coast hotspots was to wander through shady groves of Giant Redwoods (so called as they are very big and the wood is red). Our problem was to try to identify which of the many parks to concentrate on. As luck would have it, the very first bit on our route was through the *&h& Park and they had the wonderful and easy Stout Grove trail.  It was just a short walk through some of the best examples of these remarkable trees. They are very difficult to take snaps of – too big and a wide-angle lens makes them looks like misshapen Christmas trees. As one goes on down the coast one gets rather used to Redwoods and is inclined to drive on with barely a glance – rather as with bears on the Alaska Highway.

 

We wanted to do a quick visit to San Francisco so that we could put some flowers in our hair and do drugs etc (that was a joke Mr Homeland Security man). Sunny California turned out to be cold and foggy – not what we had in mind.

Poole Harbour Bridge in fog (or it might as well have been for all we could see of it).

We did a quick tour and it is a great city but we need warmth. One particularly interesting bit was stumbling across warm-up races of 45’ America’s Cup multi-hulls. From the harbour edge we had a grandstand view of several teams racing neck and neck. They each had two yachts and several support boats. Where were the Brits? Ah, over there, the boat with a knot in its front sail wrapped around the fore stay. I thought we used to be rather good at this sort of thing; well we jolly well were when I was a top ocean-racing crew. Maybe it was all bluff and they will “pull it out of the hat” come the actual racing.

Here's the Brit boat - where are all the others?

 

Ah! - Going the other way.

 

It was cold. It was grey. Death Valley was calling; it’s seldom/never cold and grey there. They boast that it is consistently the hottest place on earth with temperatures up to 57C. Well we had over 50 fairly often in Iraq and it wasn’t that big a deal. We didn’t moan – much. Death Valley is impressive. From Dante’s view one can see both the highest and the lowest points on the contiguous USA; Mt Witney at 14,494 and Badwater Basin at -282. Some folks like to spend a lot of time in places such as Death Valley but actually I think one can get a pretty good idea about it in a long-ish morning.
 

Our camp at the foot of the Sierra Nevada

 

This is what Death Valley looks like.

 

Why on earth do you think so? Ah yes! It's death Valley Sherlock.

 

Not much to note really about our trip to Las Vegas apart from the fact that we spotted a fine example of electioneering for the judiciary and we filled up with diesel at a garage just within the Nevada line which doubled as a knocking shop. I’m not joking; there were signs on the fuel pumps saying that one could even have a free shower and they offered guided tours, girls welcome. The showers actually sounded rather inviting after camping in the desert but the Nav said no. I did get a free biro from the cashier so not entirely empty-handed.

!

 

Read the sign

 

Las Vegas was much less grim than I thought it would be. Yes, it was very sleazy and totally over the top but then so am I. We didn’t spend any hard-earned dollars in the slots but did spend a lot of time driving round collecting bits for our camper.
 

one moment desert, the next, Las Vegas

 

I had read, and it turned out to be true, that the South rim of the Grand Canyon is generally busy with bus-loads of grockles and that the North rim is wilder and less spoilt. With this in mind, I had identified a spot to camp on the north bit which was meant to be special - Tuweep or Toroweap camp. This place I can highly recommend although one has to drive down more than 60 miles of rough gravel track just to get there. In fact the last 3 miles are pretty severe and were the worst we had driven over yet. What it means is that you end up at a site with only 9 spaces right adjacent to the canyon and there won’t be any grim mega-rvs or caravans.

 

This was much steeper and rockier than it looks

 

 

The signals officer establishing coms with Blighty

 

The canyon is all it’s meant to be – grand. I enclose several snaps as even my attempts with the Brownie describe it better than this drivel. I have a mate and had another who, together, once walked from the top down to the bottom and back. Just goes to show how daft some of my mates are, eh? It’s a very long way and is steep in places.

 

 

Our Grand Canyon camp

 

If you think I'm appearing a bit nervous - it's a very long way down from where I am sitting

 

 

Desert flora

 

 

Now the next bits are rather a problem. We went to some of America’s top parks and they were all fab but they seemed to pass in a bit of a whirl. The other thing is that we are about to cross the Mexican border and I am running out of time to get this away in the post or down the wire or whatever. So, I will stick up some of my photos with some captions to show you some of the great sights. I reckon that there are too many people in the more famous ones – Bryce Canyon, Arches, Monument Valley. I think one can see some equally amazing sights with far fewer people at the less visited & wonderful Capitol Reef National Park. My notebook tells me that if I had to go to just one place to get a feel for the whole of this spectacular part of America, it should be Muley Point. We discovered it almost by accident after driving down a mere 4 mile gravel track to a spot on a canyon rim. Go there. (N38 28’ 27.1” - W109 20’ 55.7”).
 

 
















 

Bryce Canyon - I think these are called Hoodoos, or something very like them is.

 

Still icy at 9 am - it gets cold in the desert

 

Cleaning filters.

Arches national Park - an arch.

 

Muley Point

Monument valley and the desert from Muley point

 

A balancing rock in the desert. Being a bit of a yob, I couldn't help wondering how much of a shove it would take.....

Monument Valley - spectacular

 

Petroglyph of an enormous bird eating a baby with its mum (the baby's) having kittens. Shouldn't have been wearing a diving mask, I say, then she might have noticed it creeping up. I think the Indians may have been on something when they did this.

 

The last of these epic parks was Monument Valley. I’m not going to bang-on at length about this you will be pleased to hear but I will say that it would be a much better place to see if the people who run it would bugger off. I don’t mean bugger off totally as they are the Navajo Indians and it would be terribly politically incorrect to suggest such a thing. It is, after all, their land but they are pretty shambolic at running a park. The only place to camp was closed, the visitor/information place was closed, the self-guided car tour route was too bumpy even for us to go further than 1.5 of the 17 miles and the whole place was covered with a lot of rubbish. Oh, and the Nav tells me that their advertised “Clean Restrooms” were in a ‘bad’ state. Now here is a solution: the “monuments” of Monument Valley are on such a huge scale that it is much better to view them from a distance; you don’t need to go into the Fawlty-Towers-esque park at all. Ah! I hear you say. That would deprive them of much needed income. Sell some of the empty bottles to a recycling plant instead of bunging them out of car windows, I say. Anyhow, they have Uranium mines squirrelled away on their Nation – that must bring in a penny or two.

 

There have been a few places that I seem to have missed that you should know about. There is a small town in Utah called Hurricane. It is very neat, the people seem to be happy, well dressed and well mannered and it has the best Walmart in America. The citizens there obviously take pride in where they live and the manager must be a good leader. Well done Hurricane!

 
The next important small town I would like to mention is Pie Town, New Mexico. There are only a few, very few houses there – it’s smaller than a village really – but several of them sell home-made pies and good ones too. Because of this, Pie Town is the self-styled pie capital of the USA.

The Good Pie Cafe
It has good pies, especially New Mexican apple, pinon and green chili made by the boss, Michael Rawl (a good lad).

 

As we were passing, we stopped at the "Very Large Array" - radio telescope in the New Mexican desert. It was quite interesting and large. Americans do sometimes lack imagination when naming things and places. (see above) Front Street, Forest Road, Rocky Mountains etc.

 

I will try to do a proper summary of  America in a while. It is a wonderful place and has great people. I should warn them however, that by 2035 50% of them could be obese. So, if 160 million all lost a modest 20lbs pa, that would be 1,600,000 tons a year. What would one do with all that? Turn it into fuel for their lawnmowers etc. I'll include it in my debrief with Obama or whoever.

That's it - we are in Del Rio, Texas and about to cross into Mexico tomorrow. The majority of the Americans seem to be scared witless of going anywhere near the place and all say we will be decapitated and kidnapped within feet of the border (it would seem more sensible to do it the other way around). We will see. Jules, could you come and rescue us as you did with Hen?