Round one, the last leg

Yellowstone, Montana. We entered the park from the Montana entrance and drove straight to Mammoth Falls, which looks and feels like you’re on another planet. There are lots of pools steaming with scalding hot water and letting off sulphur scented steam clouds. The calcite formations around the edges form a very natural hot tub, but the water is so hot and acidic that veering off the boardwalks could result in scalding to death. After Mammoth Falls, we drove around the eastern road to Canyon Village, taking our time with many of the scenic vistas and hiking around when the opportunity presented itself, where we found a campsite for the night. We saw an interpretive program by the Park Ranger, about well, Park Rangers, and went back to camp, where we saw the brightest moon we had ever seen (you could actually read by the moonlight alone), and fell asleep. We awoke the next day and found ourselves freezing again. We got ourselves ready and drove to the Norris Geyser Basin, which is an area full of geysers of various sizes, including Steamboat which lets explodes into action wuite frequently and ended up being Matt’s favorite geyser in the park. We then drove around the park, getting stuck in various traffic jams, the biggest of which all involved a poor mule deer that hordes of tourists were harassing for a photo. After this, we decided not to stop at any more hot spots. We then drove to see Old Faithful, which is cool and all, but to us not as impressive as the Norris Geyser area. We drove around Yellowstone Lake, which is massive, and lead us to a wetland area on the way out of the park which was beautiful. We took the east entrance so that we could go to Cody, Wyoming. Cody is an expensive place, because it’s a tourist trap. That said, it’s a lot of fun. Buffalo Bill built a hotel there for his daughter, Irma, which has a gunslinger show six nights a week. We showed up on the seventh, but no matter, we still had a lot of fun there.

After Cody, we ended up driving without much else to distract us to get to New Mexico. We drove through Wyoming to Cheyenne, staying the night at a KOA on the outskirts of the city. The next day we drove through Colorado (worst drivers in the world!) stopping briefly at the Garden of the Gods, to the New Mexico border where we stayed in a tiny town called Raton at another KOA. The next day we continued through the beautiful New Mexico mountains to Taos, for lunch. Taos is a cool little place, especially if you’re into art and/or new agey stuff. Since we’re not, we continued on to Santa Fe, where we stayed in another KOA cabin. Santa Fe is an absolutely beautiful place, with red adobe houses and Spanish architecture. We were lucky enough to be there for a thunderstorm, which is a sight to behold. The food all has green chilies in it, which to me is a major added bonus. The roadsides in New Mexico are covered in wild growing sunflowers and beautiful trees.

After Santa Fe, we drove down to Carlsbad for two reasons: to see the caverns and use up some time before Vegas. The caverns were absolutely amazing as was the flying of the bats at dusk, when over 100,000 bats make their way out of the cavern entrance to feast on a smorgasbord of insects. We didn’t really bring our camera for this part of the trip which ended up being a good thing, since it allowed us to just take in all of the scenery without the distraction of trying to capture it.

We then made our way through Bisby and Tombstone via Las Cruces. We didn’t really stop at either of these towns for reasons that we couldn’t explain other than we didn’t want to, but the drive was really nice with desert storms surrounding us. We ended up staying in Tucson after a long day driving, and then made our way to Jerome and Sedona via Prescott. We stopped in Jerome and checked out the faux ghost town, and only stopped outside of Sedona since it looked like more shops. If this part of the trip sounds rushed , that is probably because it was. It was a bummer to end on this kind of a note, being that the rest of the trip was awesome, but it was still good to experience our limits of touring without stopping.

We then of course went to Vegas and stayed at the Stratosphere, which I am sure needs no explanation as gambling, eating, and lounging were “par for the course.” And now we are back, resting up and getting ready for our journey overseas to Australia. The flight leaves at 11:30PM on September 20th.