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Hi everyone, Well, here's what I've been up to since leaving South America. I had a few hours stop over in Miami airport before heading over to Denver. I used this airport time wisely to familiarise myself with some things that I remembered from ten years ago, when I was last in the USA. For example, I went to a sports bar and had a big plate of nachos covered in bright orange cheese. I remember the cheese being bright orange over here, and Mum and Dad telling me that it was really high in collestorol. Then, from the overpriced news store, I bought a Butterfinger bar, penut butter crispy candy stuff covered in chocolate. Yep, they hadn't changed either, just like I remembered, but I'm glad I checked. And the nicest thing about buying all this stuff, was that I didn't have to ask the store attendent to repeat everything she said, or write down the price or point or act. It was all in English and I understood it. What a great feeling. When I got to Denver airport, I didn't have anywhere to go. I wanted to stay in Denver for a couple of days to try and look up and visit the Rabbi and his family who I was supposed to live with for 5 months whilst on student exchange in 1992. As it turns out, he moved to California seven years ago. But I didn't know that. So anyway, a nice airport shuttle bus driver drove me to afew hostels down town, but they all close at around 11pm, so I decided to splurge, and stay in a proper hotel. The Ramada cost me $USD87.00 ($AUD174.00) just to stay there for half a night. It was already midnight, and I asked them to extend their check out time until 1pm so I could enjoy my extravegant room. I was pretty blown away, after living in the volunteer house for 3 weeks, and youth hostels in South America for 6 months, this was true luxury. My room was huge, so the first luxury was just space and privacy. Then, my room had a massive bed that was the width of 3 big pillows end to end. And all of this was just for little me. And then there was a microwave and a fridge, which I had  no use for, but it was nice that it was there. And carpet, carpet is good. And cable TV, 90 something channels and nothing of much interest to watch, but I liked being able to channel surf and have the choice. I settled, at one point, on one of those shows where these pathetic girls go up in front of an audience, whinge and cry about how there boyfriends cheat on them, then the host proves it to them by playing a video of what happened when there boyfriend was placed in a room with a Ōsexy decoyĶ and was being recorded on a hidden camera. Then the boyfriend is brought out on stage, and he denies everything, and is then shown the video. He, without fail, tries to convince his girlfriend, who is sitting there with mascara running down her face, that everything he said to the decoy was a lie. The girlfriend screams at him but every second word is sensored out, and she vows that even though she's pregnant with his child, she never wants to see him again, and that she's too good for him. And then, at the end of the show, the show host says that all the interviews and dramas were filmed live 3 weeks ago, and since then, the show has got in contact with all the pathetic girls to see if they followed through with what they said in front of the audience, and in most cases the pathetic girl had forgiven the pathetic boyfriend and they were back living together. There was also an option to watch a video of choice or play Nintendo, which again, I didn't choose to do, but I liked having the little plastic card sitting on the huge TV which told me how to go about doing these things if I so desired. I had a long shower, using all the things that were put there for my convenience. A little bottle of shampoo and conditioner, and body lotion and a comb, a rasor, a sewing kit, a shower cap so you don't get your hair wet, a perfumed soap, a non perfumed soap, three towels of assorted sizes, a bath mat, a new toothbrush, a sac het of toothpaste. I used everything simply because it was there, and I could. Then, I got to dry my hair with a hair dryer. I'm not a big coffee drinker, but I made some coffee in the machine anyway. I pulled out the ironing board and ironed most of my clothes. I turned the radio on for a while, and I phoned Mum and Dad and Grandma and Zeyde, and left a message on Papa's machine. All the ammenities of the modern world. All these things that are so noticably absent or inaccessable to the budget traveller in South America. So I spent a night there and then a night in a hostel. Even the hostel was luxury. My definition of a hostel dorm room is about 4 bunk beds in a single room and possibly a locker for your stuff. But that's it. At the hostel where I stayed, and apparently it's pretty standard in the USA, the room is carpeted, has cable TV and a video machine, a private bathroom and kitchen and storage room. Like a small appartment. So that was impressive. And in Colorado local and mobile phone calls are all free, which is wierd. But then there was the issue of my Visa card which had been cut off because of an inconsistent transaction that went through for a couple of bucks. So I didn't know this and was perplexed when I couldn't withdraw any money from my account. And I had less than a US dollar on me. So I couldn't even pay for a bus to get to Jeannine's place in Boulder. Neen is a friend from my uni degree who I haven't seen, apart from briefly at graduation day, for about 4 years. She spent her last semester at Colorado University in Boulder and then never came home. So I rang her and she came and picked me up from the hostel. Boulder has a population of about 90,000 and is about 40 minutes drive from Denver. Neen looked exactly the same as when I last saw her, minus the cap and gown, but this time she pulled up in her car with her dog, Pitch,  and drove me back to her house where she lives with her boyfriend, Rob. It's funny that we're all growing up. Strange 'cause I still feel and act like a kid. We dropped into her place for a bit and did some shopping and then we were off for our first adventure. Neen took a long weekend and we drove less than two hours away to the Rocky Mountains National Park. In Estes Park, the small town at the enterance to the park, with great restraint, I walked, no, Neen dragged me, right past an old fashioned candy store. In the windows were a variety of toffee apples and home made fudge like I don't think I've ever seen before. My eyes lit up, but I didn't go in (I couldn't free my wrist from Neen's grip - Neen will tell you that this is a lie... and she'd be right, I was unrestrained). But we got ice cream later on, and I had Butter Peacan flavour which is really good. We signed in at the ranger station, and looked at an example of how to store our food safely away from the bears. There was even a sign suggesting that if, as a woman you were planning to camp, and you had your period, they strongly advised that you choose another time to go camping, Ôcause the smell can attract the bears right to you. We had no problems there, but I'm chosing to mention that warning for a story later. We had a shortish walk to where we were camping that felt like eternity 'cause I hadn't weighted my pack properly, and rather than stop and fix it, I struggled along. There were certain places designated to where you could set up camp, but not a proper camp ground. There were no other people around us. By 9:30ish, the sun was setting, and we had our tent up, but we had to rig our food bags in the trees so as not to attract any bears. Everything with a scent has to go in these stuff sacks. Food, dishes, deodorant, sun cream, lip balm, everything. And the recommendations are that the bags be hung 4 feet (1.25 metres) out from the trunk of a tree, and 12 feet (4 metres) up high so the bears canÕt reach them. It was hysterical trying to rig this up properly. Firstly we had a long piece of rope, albeit stretchy and kind of flimsy, not good for what we needed it for. We tied a rock to the end of it and took it in turns to launch it over the highest and longest tree branch we could find that was a decent amount of space away from our tent. This took numerous goes just to get the rope over a branch. Then we removed the rock and tied one of the bags to the hanging end of the rope and, like a pulley, we hoisted it up high. Fine, no problems, but we had to get the other bag up high and, of course, have a way to pull both bags down when we needed them. We tied the other bag to the other end of the rope and I used a long fallen branch to push it up and take the pressure off the rope while Neen pulled the middle of the rope, between the two bags to hoist the second bag up. We tied the loose rope in the middle around a branch stub on the tree. Of course if a bear had detected the bags, he probably could have stood on his hind legs, bitten through the rope and both bags would come tumbling down to the ground. But firstly, hopefully there were no bears around. Secondly, hopefully the bags were high enough that any scent would go undetected. And thirdly, hopefully that if the bear did bite through the rope, the bags would fall on his head and knock him out. That's a lot of hopefullys but it was honestly the best we could do. There was a toilet about a 5 minute walk away, and the toilet was bear proof. If you were sitting on the toilet, you would in no ways be protected from bears, it was not in a room or anything, but there was a big bear proof box and a lid over the toilet seat and the unflushable  pit which sufficed for the bowl. Despite having a path from the designated tent site to the toilet, it was still quite dawnting to go, especially alone in the dark. The path was almost undetectable, and youÕre surrounded by these massive pine like trees that aren't pine trees. There was no moon, and absolute stillness and silence. No birds, insects, other people, nothing. It kind of reminded me of being in the forest where "The Blaire Witch Project" was filmed. IÕm not saying that it was a good movie, or scary for the viewers, but if you put yourself in that situation it isnÕt the most comforting of situations. In fact the second night we were there, despite our fears, Neen and I decided to sleep outside, just in our sleeping bags and not our tent. Then we could look up at the sky and see the stars. It was about 2 or 3 in the morning and I woke up with a pretty major nose bleed. That happens to me out of the blue sometimes. And the first thing I though of was the sign I told you about in the rangers hut. The smell of blood can attract bears. Bears have an accute sense of smell and detect stuff from miles away. Trying not to wake Neen I reached over her and felt around in our open tent for the roll of toilet paper to use as a tissue, but in the mean time dripping blood all over both of our sleeping mats and bags. I had to wake Neen. Once under control I had to walk to the bear proof toilet to dispose of the tissues. I asked Neen to stay put but leave her torch on so I knew where to come back to. There were reflectors on our tent, but you need a light source for them to work but there was no moon. The short walk, by myself, to the toilet and back, to a tiny little torch emission was pretty eerie. When we woke up at dawn we were both relieved to find ourselves alive. As it turned out we didn't see any animals, other than little squirrels and chipmonks, for the 3 day duration we were there. Our tent was not a far walk from a meadow, and we hung around there at dusk for a couple of hours with a pack of cards and our cameras, waiting for some Elk or Moose to come grazing, but nothing appeared. We had a good time though anyway. The first day we walked somewhere and back which took all day. And the second day we walked to another place which was absolutely beautiful. It was a much shorter walk, only a couple of hours up to some boulders, called Esters Cone. The path was hardly visible, but marked by piles of rocks at regular intervals. At the top of the boulders we were rewarded with 360 degrees of views of mountains and forest and lakes and snow. It was an area we would both have liked to spend more time at, perhaps have brought our books and some food and had lunch there and spent the afternoon. But we had to go down virtually straight away and pack up all our stuff and head back to Boulder. Some people had to get up at some ungodly hour and go to work the next day. But it was a great long weekend out in the sunshine and the forest. We drove back and could see the haze and smoke from all the 5 massive forest fires around Colorado that were in the process of merging into one immense fire. We stopped off at a Mexican restaurant for dinner and laughed and reminised and relived gossip from our uni days and the past three plus years since. And then, as we reached down town Boulder, and were driving along, two Deer suddenly appear on the road, right by Neen's window. Had Neen not slammed on the breaks and the Deer, terrified, stopped in itÕs tracks in the middle of the highway, it's antlers would have easily pierced the front windshield and the accident probably would've killed us both. That's no exaduration. It was frightening. But Neen, not being the driver that I am, controlled the situation well, and we and the Deer were all fine. So three days and two nights hiking and camping in back country in the heart of a national park, and not a single sighting of any game, but on the highway in down town Boulder, we had a very close encounter with some wild life. MurphyÕs Law I guess. For the next few days, Neen and Rob went to work and I did some chores that I wanted to get done, like taking my camera to be repaired. It stopped working when a spider monkey knocked it out of the fork of a tree. And I went to a doctor and had some blood tests run and got my monkey bites checked out. I saw some fabulous photography and metal work and wood work among other things in the Boulder Art Co-op shop on Perl St Mall. The buses in Boulder are really cool, and the drivers are so friendly and helpful. Boulder is a city that very much caters for outdoor activities. Many people ride their bikes or take public transport rather than drive. Every bus has a bike rack with room for two bikes on the front, and apparently spaces for more bikes underneith. ItÕs so quick and simple to slot your bike into one of the racks and remove it just as easily, not holding up the bus or causing any sort of traffic delay. All bus trips cost the same amount, and you can get, for no extra charge, a transfer ticket, which allows you to take any bus for free within an hour from purchasing the first ticket. The bus routes all have different names like the Hop, the Skip, Jump, Long Jump, Leap, Bound etc. It's all very easy and distances are quite short. On Wednesday night, as I was packing for my week long trip to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, Neen was umming and ahhing whether sheÕd be able to get away with taking a couple of days off without notice and coming with me. She already had a week off planned for after I left when her Mum was coming out from Australia. She decided she'd do it, and with our little red sports rental car we set off on Thursday morning to get her put on the driving papers, and then head interstate. We arrived at Jackson Hole that evening and made a special trip for me to the local candy shop. These places aren't like anything I know of back home, other than the quaint little store in Nowra near the Blue Mountains. The whole store is lined with huge jars of different types of lollies. One wall is dedicated to different flavoured jelly beans. Like Berty Botts Every Flavoured Beans from Harry Potter, except they didn't have vomit or ear wax flavours, but virtually everything else. And then the floor is covered in huge barrels of butterscotch,  coffee toffees, coconut suckers, you name it, there's a barrel full of it. And then there was a counter with about 12 different flavours of home made fudge. They even have sugar-free fudge for goodness sake. And the size of the lollypops, some the size of hub-caps! Anyway enough about lollies. We passed the town hall which has a huge arch outside made of Elk antlers that the scouts have collected from the nearby Elk Sanctuary. Elks and Moose and Deers and all of those type of creatures shed their antlers each year, and then pre-mating season, grow new and bigger ones than the previous year. We stayed in some local camp ground and early the next morning drove through the Grand Tetons National Park to Yellowstone. The Teton Mountains are really beautiful and were still partially covered in snow. It would be a nice place to spend more time and hike around, but we didnÕt have any time to spare. Yellowstone was awesome. We saw so many animals including 6 Grizzly Bears, which are really rare to see. When I saw my last one as I was leaving the park I heard one guy say that he'd been to Yellowstone 3 times and this was the first Grizzly he'd ever seen. The first five we saw were qutie far away, but there was always a group of people on the side of the road with telescopes set up or binoculars that they'd let us look through. The last Bear I saw was less than 20 metres away from the road side, and he was sleeping. You didnÕt need binoculars to see him, but when you looked through them you could clearly see his massive padded paws and big claws. The ranger estimated he was about 3 years old and  250 pounds (930 kgs I think). When he woke up and started strolling closer towards the road where everyone was standing and gawking in awe, the ranger was strict about and fast about getting us all back into our cars and to move on. We also saw several Black Bears which are smaller than Grizzlies. One morning as we were packing our stuff into the car a ranger drove past in his little buggie and told us that we had a visitor. About 30 metres away, and coming our way was a giant male Moose. He was so beautiful with his big magestic antlers. He walked about 10 metres away right past our tent grazing the grass. Thank goodness he wasn't interested in our porridge,  apparently Moose can be really violent. There were lots of Elk around, they're like biggish Deer, and they have white bottoms. And there were also lots of Bison, also known in America as Buffalo. They were loosing their winter coats and looked a bit moth eaten, but their massive wooly heads were cute. Here we didn't have to string up our food like in RMNP because the camp sites were set up for numerous tents and RVs (Recreational Vehicles. Campers) and so facilities were provided. Each tent space had it's own bear proof box to put stuff in. But we still had to be really carefull about dropping food and washing up. After washing your dishes you had to throw the washing up water down the toilet, which was in a bear proof room. Again, it wasn't a flushable toilet or anything, just a toilet seat over a big pit. Neen and I laughed at this, because it was so revolting. You could look at it as tipping your dirty washing up water down the toilet, or alternatively, as pooing in your kitchen sink. Another morning we woke up at 4am and went to the top of the rim of the massive crater in which the majority of Yellowstone is based, and watched a sun rise. After that we went for a guided horse ride, which was okay. In 1988 there was a huge fire that ripped through the National Park. 33,000 acres were burned, and a lot has not yet recovered. Some areas are densely covered with baby fur trees, mainly reseeded naturally by the birds and animals and wind. Other parts have been replanted by the park administration, and other parts remain with thousands of dead tree trunks still standing, reminding everyone of the vast devistation. In some areas, I particularly remember a hill we rode past on our horse ride, that there was a distinct line down the middle of the hill where on one side were bare, grey, dead tree trunks, and right next to them were adult trees, green and healthy. What had happened was the wind had changed direction and the fire just blew back onitself, never touching or harming the other half of the mountain. Yellowstone is a major hot spot on the Earth's surface and has many geysers and mud volcanos and thermal springs and pools. I kept on getting the words mixed up, geysers and giesers, but we did see a lot of giesers watching geysers.  At Noris Geyser Basin we waited an hour for the major Geyser to go off. They're not reliable phenominons, but the guide gave us some tips on what to look for as indicators that something was about to happen. This particular geyser, I think it was called Echinus, was fairly well researched, and they knew what the plumbing below the hole looked like. The signs to look for before it exploded was that the pool of hot water filled up, so the smaller rocks disappeared under the water level, and then the pool would overflow. We could see the area that repeatedly gets wet from this overflow, as the rock was quite red from the minerals the water contains, whereas the rock that doesn't get hit by the water was fairly white from being bleached by the steam. At first the overflow started as a tiny trickle, but we knew that there had to be a huge overflow before anything would get exciting. Then, more and more bubbles started to appear in the water. The pressure under the earth was building, the steam was getting thicker, and even the waterfall stream was steaming a lot more than when it first started. Then, a small shoot of water shot up about a  metre, and then more and more and higher an higher, and it evaporated fast until the full on water jet couldn't even be seen because of the huge cloud of steam. Then, the jet retreated, and as the steam evapourated, we could see the original water pool level sinking. The forces below the hole in the Earth were sucking the water back down, to be reheated, and for the cycle to start again. A different geyser in the Noris basin had it's last major eruption in late April. No one witnessed it first hand, and I don't think it would be possible to do so safely, but they knew about it because the eruption measured on the rictor scale further away in the park at the Mammoth Hot Springs. Also, so much water was blown out of this hole that it shot up about 60 metres into the air, and I think lasted for 90 minutes, if I remember correctly. The most common reason for people turning up in any of the Yellowstone Medical Clinics is because of burnt index fingers. Despite the water steaming and boiling, people still insist on testing and making sure for themselves that it really is hot. But on a more serious note, several people die every year in Yellowstone and usually they're also tourons (1/2 tourist, 1/2 moron), who, despite the frequent and clearly written signs, venture of the trails or walkways. Often the earth's crust in the area is very thin, just a thin layer of baked earth, and under the person's weight it crumbles and the person falls into boiling water. Some people manage to get out but have severe burns to most of their body. Neen had to leave on Sunday morning so she could make it back to work on Monday. So again we got up at 4am and drove to the town a couple of hours away from our campsite where she hired a car and headed off home. I drove back to Yellowstone to visit a couple of things we didn't have time to see, namely the infamous geyser named Old Faithful, and the mud volcanoes. Old Faithful was impressive, but I'm not sure why it's more famous than any of the other geysers. The mud volcanoes were smelly and just the same as the hot springs except muddier water. As I was leaving I had to wait about 15 minutes for a small heard of big bison to cross the pedestrian pathway. After leaving Yellowstone I drove to a town where I camped in a very fancy and expensive campground. Unfortunately, I didn't want to use any of their facilities, but they have to charge for them anyway. Two swimming pools, a TV room, a games room, laundry, pancake breakfast in the morning. I just needed a piece of ground to put up my tent. Anyway, I do think it's really great, that in the US, so many people own or rent RVs (recreational vehicles/campers) and they just move when they want, stay when they want. There are heaps of grandparents, parents and kids, dogs and cats that all go on camping trips together. The kids have often have their bikes, and meet up with other kids and it's a big happy family event. I don't know if that happens in Australia. I've never noticed it. The US highways are always stacked up with these campers being trailed behind cars, and even more often, house cars the size of buses, towing the family car behind it. The next day I drove for many hours through the state of Wyoming and into South Dakota where Mount Rushmore is located. This was another thing in the US I've always wanted to see, and although it is gynormous, especially considering it is a stone carving, I actually thought it would be bigger. To get to the main viewing spot, you have to walk through the Avenue of Flags, which has all the state flags, and the year of their inclusion into the United States. Downstairs is a museum containing samples of the tools they used to build the structure and the scale replica from which they worked. I learned a bit about the four presidents who are carved there, and the reason they were chosen. George Washington for being the first president and founder of the country. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the country for writing the Declaration of Independence and expanding the American land with the Lousiana Purchase. Abraham Lincon, the 16h president, for keeping the country united in difficult times and ending slavery in the USA. Finally, and not included in the original design of the carving, was Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the States, and was included for his economic forsight and pro-activity in the purchase of the Panama Canal. Behind the carving is a huge cavity which was intented to be a Hall of Records, a massive archive or time capsual. But the head sculptor in the project, Gutzon Borglum died before it was finished, and his son decided to leave the mountain almost exactly as his father had left it rather than finishing off his father's work. There were supposed to be many other features to the mountain, but there wasn't enough time or money to complete them. From Mount Rushmore I drove as far as I could and ended up spending a night in a small campground in Nebraska, and then the next morning I headed back to Neen's place in Colorado. She took me that night to a huge almost natural amphitheatre called Red Rocks. Apparently the accoustics are really good there as the sound reverbarates in the massive rocks that jut out of the flat field like surroundings. On my last night at Neen's place we watched the great Australian movie called The Castle, and got lots of laughs. But about 2/3 of the way through in an electrical storm the blender in the kitchen turned itself on and then all the electricity in the house cut out. And that's how my time in Colorado ended. At 4am the next morning Neen drove me out to the airport and we said our goodbyes. Hopefully it won't be another 3.5 years til we see each other again. Thanks so much Neen, Rob and Pitch for having me. I had a great time, and am so glad that you could join me on my camping trips Neen. And that's it for this episode everyone. I'm really behind on these diary email things, so the next one or two shouldn't be far behind. Hope all is well where ever you all are. Happy birthday Elise. ciao all, Nique