Storms & Swarms

Tuesday 26^th July

A lazy morning as our flight from Riverton to Denver was at 135pm, and the airport was just an hour away.

We arrived at the familiar small airport building and checked in.  Security here was unusually strict.  Two stern officials seemed to be checking everyone’s luggage in deep and intimate detail.  We were both asked to put our cases in the interrogation table where they were opened and the contents initially swabbed.  I suddenly remembered my Hot Tamales and wondered whether the mass spectrometer would detect them, and more worryingly brand me as some kind of Cinnamon Terrorist.

In Denver we picked up our Jeep, which we would keep until the end of our trip in LA.  We were slightly panicked when we couldn’t find the outside temperature gauge, a prerequisite for any holiday driving trip, but it appeared suddenly after a few random button presses.

Our Iphone sat nav got us around Denver from the airport and onto the 285 to Poncha Springs.  The bus driver at the airport has asked us where we were heading and when we said Poncha Springs, he told us it was over 400 miles away and we wouldn’t get there for at least 5-6 hours.  We politely disagreed and said perhaps it was a different Poncha Springs. He was adamant, and more than a little annoying, and 250 miles out.   

As it turned out we didn’t arrive until 9pm, but that’s because we got caught in the most intense thunderstorm we had ever encountered and certainly ever driven through.  Jo was at the wheel and all I could do was try and see through the rain hammered windscreen as the lightning hit the ground around us.

We climbed up through the mountains, near Breckenridge and Aspen ski resorts.  The storm was soon behind and we stopped for supplies and food.  On the final leg we had a 360 degree view of mountains and the sun setting below them in the west.

Wednesday 27^th July

This was our big drive day. 

We planned nearly 400 miles with a lunch stop at the Colorado National Monument just west of Grand Junction, Colorado.  Our journey took us along a rim drive of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  

We explored Colorado National Monument for a couple of hours.  It is a red rock canyon with towering spires formed from the eroding rock.  The first of many we would see on this trip.

From here, we drove along Highway 141 as we’d heard it was a really picturesque route.  It was, and it twisted through the canyons.  Halfway, we came across a strange resort seemingly in the middle of nowhere in a town called Gateway.  We stopped for coffee and spoke to a guy called John who was a big fan of early Genesis.  He told us that the ‘Gateway Canyons Resort’ was built by John Hendricks, the CEO of the Discovery Channel.  

From here to Moab, our home for the next two days.  Outside of town, we noticed what looked like mini tornados on either side of the road up ahead. It was an extraordinary sight, and one which filled us with dread when we realised they were in fact swarms of mosquitoes.  As we drove through them they hit the car like the sound of rain.

It was late when we arrived at the hotel and we had not eaten.  We were also so tired that we used our binoculars to see what food was available inside a shop opposite, before making any kind of commitment to walk over there.

The Day the Sun Went Out

Sunday 24^th July

Had a bit of a lie in but got going around 8am heading for the same coffee place in town.  The young guy recognised me, and his opening greeting was “Hey, I was just reading about some guy in Hong Kong reckons he’s proved time travel is not possible”

I’ll miss this place, especially when I’m next sitting in my local coffee shop knee deep in dirty cups and napkins.

We started the day just inside the northern entrance at Mammoth Hot Springs and then headed to what is probably the second most photographed attraction in Yellowstone after Old Faithful; Grand Prismatic Spring.  The steam emanating from this extraordinary 370 foot wide hot spring glows just above the surface in reds, yellows and blues from algae and bacteria living in its 170 degree waters.

From here we saw the massive Yellowstone lake for the first time as we drove around the western edge towards the eastern entrance along the Sylvan Pass.  In the far distance over the Absaroka mountains, we saw smoke coming from the Shoshone National Forest.  The evidence of the 1988 Yellowstone fire is quite obvious as trees stand dead stripped of leaves and bark with new small young trees emerging  from the hillsides.  Apparently 36% of the trees were destroyed in the fire.

 

The smoke was coming from quite a way outside Yellowstone and at the time we had no way of knowing that it would soon engulf us for over a hundred miles and finally as the ash rained down on the car, the sun disappeared from the sky.

Monday 25^th July

I’ve never been a runner. Jo and I go to the gym regularly where she runs, and I am happy on any form of rower, cross trainer stepper etc, but I have never been comfortable with running.  I tried it once many years ago and choose a dark night in the middle of winter for my first attempt at being a bona fide jogger.  My inexperience led me to close my front door and immediately run as fast as I could in a random direction.  After around 90 seconds my breathing became so heavy that I imagined my sleepy village lane neighbours would be cowering in the corners of their houses praying that the ogre outside would not get in.

As I knew I would be away from the gym for a while I decided a few weeks back to learn how to run.  With some excellent guidance from my friend Chris, I got to grip with the basics, most importantly, pacing and got up to 5k in a short time.   I know this may sound a bit pathetic to most, but for me it was a real personal achievement which allowed me to complete an early morning 3k run at 7732ft along the shore of the Yellowstone Lake.  Beats the treadmill at David Lloyd any day. 

Some souvenir hunting followed including the discovery of Hot Tamales, a cinnamon jelly bean type chewy sweet which become slightly dangerous if eaten more than one at a time.

Our next destination was The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, an area of canyonland in the park with two giant waterfalls where we saw Ospreys nesting.  It was from here also that the Ribbon lake trail starts, the spot where a hiker was killed earlier this month. The trail was sealed off.

As we came out of here a temporary road sign flashed a warning to 'Stay in Car, No Stopping for Half Mile'.  It didn’t say why, but we knew. 

We stopped a little way past half a mile and waited in an empty pullout by the side of the road.  We scanned the nearby area with our binoculars and once again it was Hot Tamale time.  As Jo doesn’t like them it was a solo effort.    We never found all the Hot Tamales that I dropped when we spotted some cars emergency stopping up the road.

We drove over and parked the car.    Just across the field was a mother grizzly and her two cubs, most likely the same we had seen yesterday.  We couldn’t have wished for a better end to our final day in Yellowstone. After an hour or so, we started our journey to our next stop, Thermopolis.

Soon after we exited the park at the eastern entrance, we saw the smoke from a Shoshone Forest fire hanging low in the sky. For the next hundred miles or so the sky was dark and the ash floated all around us. When the sun finally disappeared we stopped the car and got out to take a photo.  The ash rained down on the car.
 

In Thermopolis, we encountered a mosquito so large, one of the locals was running around the town with it clutched in his hand, and he was screaming.