Yellowstone, Wyoming

I left Spokane in the early afternoon and headed east on Intestate 90. I passed through Idaho, it's only about eighty miles wide at this point. I90 starts in Seattle and goes all the way across to the east coast and finishes in Boston. It took me through towns such as Smelterville, Stateline and Anaconda. I headed into Montana,big sky country, and pulled off the intestate to take a look at the $50,000 silver dollar bar. This bar has silver dollars all over it's walls. It also a really interesting gift shop attached. As well as the usual postcards and tacky junk for sale it had a handsome selection of knives, swords and throwing stars. The sales woman offered to sell me the "knuckle buckle", a belt buckle incorporating not one, but two knuckle dusters. As a News of the World reporter would say, I made my excuses and left.
The intestate was fairly quiet and I attempted to remain within the speed limit. The exit numbers didn't even confuse me any more, here they are done on the mileage from the state line, not a straight one,two,three etc. system. I made a few stops, often to change the CD on the audio book I was listening too.It was about 500 miles to Yellowstone and I had planned to split the driving across Thursday and Friday. Now I know that for most Americans 500 miles is not a long distance and is the normal distance to the next nearest town in the plains states. I,however, am English and that distance would probably take me from one end of England to the other. Especially since I think the British drive a lot faster. Anyway I reached Bozeman in Montana, ninety miles from the park entrance, at about 7pm. I drove onto Livingston and turned off the intestate to the park. The driving had gone really well, there had been no major challenges for me. I won't say that driving on the right now comes naturally to me,it doesn't,but it was definitely getting more comfortable. I found a campsite for the night outside the park and settled down to try and get some sleep. It was not a good night, the wind was howling and I thought the tent would tip over.It didn't and I woke up to a bright and sunny,but cold morning. I headed south into Gardiner and then I was in the park. The entry fee is $25, but this buys you a week pass, so you can come and go as you please. I went into the Mammoth visitor centre and asked what projects they were doing for National parks day, Saturday 26th September. They were doing two, one to clean up a cemetery and another doing trail maintenance. I signed up for the trail maintenance. In Mammoth there is a hillside that looks like it has been calcified. There is so much hot spring water coming out of the ground that the whole hillside is covered in it. It has formed into some amazing shapes and the surface of the ground is very brittle, so you can't walk on it. I hadn't known it was there and it reminded me a little of Japan. I fact I hadn't actually thought about what I would see in the park except for the Old Faithful geyser. And that was on the other side of the park, a drive of about a hundred miles as the most direct route was closed for bridge maintenance.The park is about fifty by sixty miles and was the first national park in America, so a fitting place to spend National Parks day.
After the hot spring hill side I went on my way to find a campsite. I hadn't realised that it was so close to the end of the summer season. The warm weather I had enjoyed all along the west coast had lulled me into a false sense of security. A few of the camp sites had closed already and there was an issue with one of the park roads which was closed for parts of the day due to a forest fire. I went to the next campsite along from Mammoth, Norris and found a free spot and set up my tent. The ground was hard and I got help from another camper with hammering in the stakes, I didn't want the tent blowing away with me. The site is next to a meadow, complete with its own grazing bison. I settled down for an early night but was disturbed by two German girls asking me if I knew the people on the pitch next to me. The girls had had their pitch stolen, I didn't know them, but I said the girls could share my pitch if they wanted. After this I decided that it was actually too early to sleep so I went over to the guys pitched to the other side of me. Bernard and Pascal were from Chamonix and had and awesome fire going. I am sure you can see the attraction. They then offered me wine and I thought my evening was complete. We were joined by Clara and Anna and a guy called Bob from Colorado. Then the guys camped on the other side of me turned up and apologised to Clara and Anna. I spent the evening dodging between two camp fires and drinking beer and wine. I went to sleep late and wondered how I would fair in the morning.