Yellowstone - there and back again!

Planes, trains and automobiles. After saying a final fond farewell to the last of our Friends and Family in North East America, we made tracks back from Quebec City to Toronto - a long drive of 500+ miles, nearly the distance between Land's End and John O' Groats, to begin the onward, rather mammoth trek across the mid-west the next day. Thankfully the roads were all lightly loaded dual carriageways, highways in American parlance, and the journey passed in six hours with relative ease. The aim was to get to Yellowstone, in which Emily had expressed a particular interest, so in quick succession we caught a bus from Toronto across the border into Detroit (the day after our Canadian drive) then the next day a train to Chicago and two flights - to Denver then on to Salt Lake City.

On the train

The train from Detroit to Chicago was our second experience of Amtrak and provided an interesting opportunity to observe not only the countryside’s changing colours in the Fall that was almost upon us, but also the urban decay evident in some of the towns between Detroit and Chicago. Empty shacks, closed shops and factories in abundance, but there were signs of new life elsewhere so not all was doom and gloom, however in Chicago and Salt Lake City we encountered the ‘anti-capitalist’ protesters that have been all the rage recently across the States.

Raising the bridge just after we crossed

Rail tracks in downtown Chicago

We nearly didn’t make the first flight, from Chicago to Denver as the security line was so appallingly slow but they put on extra lines when passengers became visible rattled and we made it to the gate with minutes to spare – important considering we had a connecting flight at Denver later to Salt Lake City (SLC).

Snowing in Idaho Falls!

After a few weeks of mostly blissful sunshine we arrived in SLC to the cold and rain, but didn’t stay long as we set out with a hire car for Yellowstone Park, a couple of hundred miles north. By evening the rain became snow, unseasonally a month earlier than was usual, and we were snowed in at our overnight stay at Idoho Falls necessitating a second night’s stay. On the first night I helped, perhaps a little unwisely, to clear snow from the satellite dish on the hotel roof, as the maintenance man was stuck elsewhere. Not something to be repeated but it secured us a free room on the second night and an upgrade to an executive suite. Thankfully the weather cleared and we were able to progress into Yellowstone Park the next day.

Fixing stuff

Yellowstone Park (YP). What can I say about YP but - WOW! It has something for everyone. Emily was particularly interested in the wildlife; in fact she had a check-list of animals to tick off. I wanted to see some of the famous geological features; most will have heard of geysers (pronounced by the Yanks, rather disconcertingly ‘guy-zers’ rather than our ‘geezers’), and hot springs, but may be unfamiliar with mudpots and fumaroles. With Yellowstone having more than half of the worlds geothermal activity, sitting as it does on a supervolcano that is apparently overdue another eruption, it is an interesting place to visit and a short drive through the Park requires frequent halts to look at hot-pool-this, mudpot-that or other interesting geological features. The most famous Thermal in the park is ‘Old Faithful’ Geyser, which erupts every 90 minutes; we saw it erupt twice during our stay.

Emily and her bear behind



Steam rising



Lots of danger



Old Faithful erupting



In addition there are mountains, trees and waterfalls in abundance and the combination makes for a spectacular location in every sense.



Awesome!



We managed to see many of the animals on Emily’s list including one sighting each of a Grizzly and a Black bear, as well as lots of elk and bison (or buffalo), but, having spent five days in the park, moose and wolves eluded us so we cheated a little and dropped into Bear World on the way back to SLC and observed lots of Black bear, another Grizzly, some wolves, a moose, more elk, mountain goats and a somnolent pig, called somewhat imaginatively Piggy-piggy, happily snoring away in its pig-shaped divot, which activity unaccountably gave Emily, whilst glancing between P-p and me, much cause for merriment. She captured the occasion on video with sound.

On familiar ground

Bit too close for comfort.

Close but not too close

Salt Lake City. After five days in the Park we returned to SLC and with an onward Amtrak train to San Francisco departing the following evening, we took the opportunity the next day to visit the Mormon Tabernacle and their Family Search Centre.

The Temple SLC

Inside the Temple

We didn’t know much about The Church of Latter Day Saints before visiting the Temple but our two young female hosts filled in some gaps. Mormon youth (18-20 yrs) are required to do missionary work for 18 months with boys being posted around the world and girls coming to Salt Lake City to act as hosts for visitors. Our two hosts were from China and Sweden, and whilst they were polite in the extreme, the underlying recruiting theme was a little disconcerting though easily deflected. I avoided quizzing them too closely about how the Book of Mormon, containing ancient ‘additional’ biblical texts, was supposed to have found its way into a box to be discovered by their founding father, Joseph Smith, in New England in 1827. There was also detail concerning Jesus, after his death, also appearing to Americans, in America, which assertion I also didn’t pursue to hard. We weren’t actually allowed in the Temple, but saw a model of its inside instead – what surprised me was that it doesn’t have a large internal space like a cathedral but is layered with lots of functional rooms, for meetings, marriage ceremonies etc, and there were areas in to which our missionary girls weren’t allowed – that is until they were married. All in all a very interesting visit, but I came away from it thinking how it reminded me of Scientology, though that may be a little harsh since many of the basic tenets for their religion are Christian in origin.

Family tree-ing

Later in the day we visited the Family Search Centre: Mormons take their genealogy very seriously – their (previously stated) intention is to use the discovery of past lives in order to vicariously baptise those who have died and take them into the Mormon fold, so to speak. Good luck to their beliefs I say – but from our perspective the Centre provided (free) ready access to UK census data for which one would normally pay. Since my Moorhouse family tree had been well researched already by an historian in the late 19th century, I opted to look at the forebears of my paternal grandmother, Ethyl Mary and was pleasantly surprised by the results – tracking back to her great-great-great-great grandfather in the mid 1700s. The Mormon library assistant helping me remarked on my success which appeared to be unusual in her recent experience. Emily also had some limited success, and we were so absorbed in making progress that we were eventually kicked out at their closing time – 9pm.



Relaxing on the train.

Train for San Francisco. We made our way to the Amtrak station for an 1130pm train bound for San Francisco, that eventually turned up three hours late at 0230am. Having come from Chicago they apparently often run late, and a little worse the wear we clambered on-board. Emily went straight to bed in our cabin exhausted; my enthusiasm was undaunted, due in part to my usual exuberance for train travel, and I kept vigil a while longer. We spent the next day on the train as well, crossing over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in spectacular fashion, and enjoying our meals with some of the other passengers. We lunched with an older rather distinguished Chilean gentleman and his American wife. We talked about the economy and he waxed lyrical about the benefits of dictatorships for handling financial downturns; he looked a little like Pinochet and could even have passed for one of his cronies. I put up with it for a while before suggesting, politely, that members of 'the missing'and their families might have something to say about dictators' methods for handling anything, and we mutually agreed to turn the conversation to more mundane matters.
Onward to San Francisco!