USA: 1st October - 12th October

After four nights in Vancouver celebrating various birthdays, I travelled down on the bus to Seattle with my Sister and Dad. We spent the night in a motel there before flying the next day to Bozeman, Montana, where we had booked a rental car. Two hours later and we were in Yellowstone, and it promptly started to pour with rain. Next morning, things weren't much better but at least the rain held off. We started out by having a look at the Travertine Terraces, right next to the hotel at Mammoth. These are limestone terraces and pools formed from the minerals that are left behind when the water from the hot springs evaporates... I think you all know what I'm talking about. Trouble is, they are mostly dried up now and not as spectacular as they once were.

Next we tackled the Beaver Ponds trail, in the hope of seeing, well, some beavers. And also some moose, which allegedly frequent the area. We didn't see either, although we did see several beaver dams, which are somehow less neat and more chaotic than I had imagined. Here is a picture of one. What do you think?

We were just starting to get fed up with the bloody trail, which seemed to go on much further than its reported five miles, when we came across this elk on the trail. He cheered us up and we were back in Mammoth before we knew it.

The Norris Geyser Basin includes the largest active geyser in the world, a rare acidic geyser, and a multitude of hydrothermal features. The basin is Yellowstone's hottest and most dynamic hydrothermal area.

This is Cistern Spring which is linked to the nearby Steamboat Geyser, the tallest geyser in the world. When Steamboat erupts, Cistern empties out. Here though you can see how the boiling, slightly acidic water that flows from the spring is killing the trees in the surrounding area.

Sister and Dad next to a geyser in Norris

My Sister and my Dad next to a hot spring in the Norris Geyser Basin.

We spent our second night in the park in the historic Yellowstone Lodge, one of the largest log cabins in the world. This is the entrance hall, with its enormous stone chimney

Morning Glory Pool was named because its intense blue and yellow colours reminded early park visitors of the Morning Glory flower. However, the blue colour came from thermophilic bacteria which thrived at a certain very high temperature. Over the years, the hot vent that feeds the spring has become progressively more blocked by rubbish and coins thrown in by visitors, with the result that the water is no longer as hot as it used to be and a different species of bacteria is now predominant, which has a more greenish colour. Whatever its colour, it still looks extremely beautiful, and very enticing for a swim. Which would of course be a bad, bad idea.

Old Faithful is claimed to be the most famous geyser in the world. That may be true (can you name a more famous geyser?) but it certainly isn't the most spectacular in the the park. We watched it early in the morning and were left wondering whether it had really gone off or not. We watched it again at lunchtime and it was just as anticlimatic.

Beehive geyser is less well known and less regular then Old Faithful. However we were lucky enough to happen past it just as it was going through its preliminary warm up rumblings, and caught the spectacle of its eruption from close up. The power and noise of the eruption was very impressive, not possible to capture in a photograph of course. In the background you can see the Old Faithful Lodge.

This is Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in the park. The red colour again comes from thermophilic bacteria living in the warm run off water from the spring.

That afternoon we drove the thirty or so miles down to the Grand Teton National Park, just to get a quick taster of it. This is a view of Grant Teton mountain across Jenny Lake, in the middle of the park.

Heading back to Yellowstone late in the afternoon, we drove along the lakeshore on our way to the Lake Hotel where we would spend the night.

Next day we headed north to the Grand Canyon Of The Yellowstone (or GCOTY, not, of course, to be confused with the real Grand Canyon, of the Colorado, further south!!). The river plunges into the canyon via two waterfalls. The rocks here range in all shades of black, yellow and red. Deep in the canyon, steam can be seen rising from the many thermal vents.

Here I am with my Dad, at one of the GCOTY viewpoints.

It rained a fair bit that day, but the flip side was that when the sun came out afterwards, it made for a glorious rainbow and nice photo.

On our last full day in the park we completed the whole circuit of the Grand Loop by crossing the Dunraven pass and returning to Mammoth. Just after we had crossed the pass, we came across a bunch of cars parked by the side of the road, and as we slowed down we saw that there were some bears below. So we pulled over and watched this family of three black bears for quite a while as they crossed the meadow below the road.

That evening we drove out to the Lamar Valley, said to be the park's prime wildlife viewing area. We saw some dear and of course bison (bison are everywhere in Yellowstone) but not the wolves we were hoping to see. Eventually we came to a spot where there were lots of parked cars and people on a raised bank with big cameras and spotting scopes. We stopped and asked what they were looking at. They said that wolves had been spotted on the far side of the valley that morning, so they were hoping they would be back out hunting in the evening. We waited a half hour or so but there was nothing to be seen so we headed back to Mammoth for the night. Next morning, I got up before daybreak (couldn't persuade father or sister it was worthwhile) to drive out to the spot again in the hope of seeing the wolves. About half way out I passed a spot where there were lots of cars parked on a short trail that led north from the road. Foolishly I carried on to the spot we had been to the previous night, but it was totally deserted! So I raced back to where all the cars were, and headed off down the little track, til I came to a spot where the people with the big cameras and spotting scopes from the previous evening had congregated. There in the distance, at least a mile away, were four or five black spots running along a ridge. They stopped, and I could hear them howling. Through my telephoto lens I could clearly see they were wolves. One of the guys there let me have a good look through his scope and I could see every detail; six wolves, five jet black and one light grey coloured, resting now and occasionally howling. I could see them howl through the scope; the sound reached my ears a second or two later. Then I, yes little me amongst all these guys with their fancy equipment trained on those black dots in the distance, spotted another wolf off to the left, no more than a few hundred yards away! I said, there's one over there!! and everyone spun round and started clicking away. He quickly headed off away from us but I managed to get a few decent shots, like this one.

After breakfast we headed back out through Mammoth Gate on our way back to Bozeman. This is me in front of the gate. Five great days in Yellowstone. For me, it pretty much lived up to everything I'd heard about it.

From Bozeman, my Dad & Sister flew back to Vancouver and I flew to San Francisco. I arrived there at 2330 on a friday night with no hotel reservation. I'd tried to make a hostel reservation earlier that day while waiting for my connecting flight in Salt Lake City, but all twelve hostels I called were full for the whole weekend. I thought about asking a taxi driver to take me to the nearest cheap motel, but in the end caught the BART train to the city center then walked to Fisherman's Wharf in the hope of finding somewhere. But absolutely everywhere was full. I wandered about for two hours before finding somewhere that had a room; the Hilton, for $269! I asked the night manager if he knew anywhere cheaper - he suggested a motel nearby. It was full too but the guy at the neighbouring Chinese hotel (which was also full) said I needed to get to Lombard Street which was wall to wall motels. It took me half an hour to get there (all the taxis seemed to be full); just before I got to Lombard I found a motel with one vacant room, but he wanted $112. I declined, saying I'd find something on Lombard. Two blocks later I was on Lombard, but as far as the eye could see there was motel neon spelling out the words NO VACANCIES. It was now 3am. I headed back to the $112 room to at least get a few hours's sleep before my Alcatraz tour.

I had a tour booked to Alcatraz the next morning at 1045. Unwilling to spend another $112 to stay in the motel, and with little prospect of finding anything significantly cheaper, I decided to take the night bus out of San Francisco that night and head straight down to San Diego. So I headed off to the Alcatraz ferry pier with all my stuff. The very friendly people there let me store my rucksack in their trailer (We don't normally do this, but...) while I visited the island.

B-Block in Alcatraz, known to the inmates as Broadway.

A typical cell in Alcatraz.

After four fascinating hours on Alcatraz, I got the ferry back. I picked up my bag and went to the Greyhound terminal to get a ticket for the night bus to San Diego. It left at 2200, so I had a few hours to explore the city, walk up Tower Hill and take this photo of downtown with the Transamerica Pyramid and the Bay Bridge, and then get a decent meal, which I ate in a big restaurant in the heart of Chinatown. It was brim full of Chinese people, so I figured it must be good. I got enough beef in black bean sauce to feed the Terracotta Army, and all for just $4.50. An absolute bargain, and as I finished I leant back and reflected on how well the day had gone, all things considered. I slept like a log on the bus down to San Diego too so all in all I managed to salvage a disastrous situation, even if I did end up spending less time in San Francisco than I wanted to, and missed out on Yosemite altogether.

I then spent four days in San Diego mentally preparing myself to make the plunge into Latin America. I went to the zoo, which is great but not as good as the one in Singapore. I also spent half a day on this ship, the USS Midway an aircraft carrier decommissioned in 1991, shortly after serving as the flagship of the US forces in the first Gulf War. It has now been converted to a museum, which gives a great idea of how life was, and I guess still is, on the US's carriers. Across the bay, the latest adddition to their vast, astronomically expensive and (it seems to me) fairly superfluous fleet of supercarriers, the USS Ronald Reagan, is waiting to enter service.

This is a view from the Flight Operations center of the USS Midway. Its WWII heritage is clear.

A seagull at sunset on San Diego's waterfront. Next day I would take a deep breath and dive headlong into Mexico. The real adventure about to begin.

Next page: Mexico
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