Bulls, Broncos and Dinosaurs

We woke on our last morning in YS to beautiful sunshine. Absolutely typical – the one day we had planned to be in the car so didn’t care if it rained, and the weather was great. Hoff was mightily disappointed We’d not had the sunshine to go wolf hunting but we both agreed that nature was nature and we’d seen so much in the park that we couldn’t complain.

The sunshine meant that our drive East towards Cody through the Shoshone Forest was absolutely spectacular and certainly one of the most beautiful journeys I’ve ever done. The twisting turns took us next to rivers and between huge rock canyons, with the leaves all turning shades of yellow and brown for the autumn. It was a stunning drive that left us breathless and Ronda, our RV, with rather warm brakes! Hoff also managed to get her picture with the Yellowstone sign so she soon forgot about the wolves!

The thing about this part of America is that it is not only massive, but ever changing. One moment you are in never ending forests, the next you are in cowboy territory. Thus we passed into the Buffalo Bill National Park and then into Cody, the Rodeo capital of the world. With over 100 years of history (which is a lot for the US) this is actually a really interesting place and we went to the local museum which was very informative (even Hoff admitted it was good) with the largest collection of guns I’ve ever seen. Hoff fluttered her eyelids at the guard and he let us in for free, so that was an added bonus! Dinner took us to the famous Irma hotel, but not before we watched a rather cringeworthy re-enactment of a Wild West gun fight in the street outside. Hoff didn’t like the blanks being fired – so much so that she spilt half her wine when the first one went off! Having our first meal outside the RV for a week meant we soon forgot the rather am-dram style acting as we waddled back to our RV, full of steak and hamburger.

Thursday morning saw us making use of all the modern amenities we’d been missing in the RV – a proper shower, laundry facilities and WiFi – before we left to drive back towards Yellowstone, which was the quickest way to Grand Teton National Park. We decided to make a pit stop for a night in the aforementioned Shoshone Forest, where we joined a trail horse ride for two hours through the foothills of YS park. It was a spectacular ride and gave us a proper view of the forests at a gentle horses walking pace. This was a wedding gift from family and a lovely wat to spend the afternoon. We overnighted in a local camp sight – $15 as opposed to the $40 we paid in Cody was much appreciated- before heading towards Grand Teton.

Friday dawned wet and windy. In fact it rained most of the night and the Ranger at the gate to Yellowstone told us we were lucky to get over the pass as they were expecting snow and were ready to close the road. We skipped through YS once again and into GT, where the weather was sadly no better. In fact it was worse, and despite a lunch break sat in our waterproofs waiting for the torrential rain to subside before we went for a walk, it didn’t get any better so we pressed on towards Jackson. It was a real shame as we caught glimpses of the Teton range through the clouds and could tell that they’d look magnificent on a better day, but we knew we’d come back one day so said Auf Weidersehn and drove on towards Jackson. On the way out we spotted moose and her calf chilling out in the rain, so it wasn’t a completely wasted trip.

Jackson was what everyone had warned us it would be – a local ski town overrun by the rich, and tourists – so we quickly decided not to stay there and drove on.

By this point we were beyond anywhere we’d planned we’d be and even getting to the edge of google maps, so we’d be relying on paper and local tourist pamphlets for somewhere to stay. The road climb led onto the steeps of Wyoming along the 191, another beautiful US byway, and we eventually found ourselves in a place called Pinedale. Plonked slap bang in the middle of a plateau – which itself is absolutely humongous (in America everything is bigger and the size of the vistas you see on your drives just cannot be described in words) – it’s a real cowboy town. Hoff managed to find her much desired pair of moose pyjama trousers before we found some WiFi at the local visitors centre (hanging around outside as it was locked by this time) and downloaded some more maps, which allowed us to find a beautiful secluded campsite overlooking a local manmade lake. We expected it to be deserted but we found it quite busy with weekenders and those road tripping like us, having left it late in the season to avoid the US school holidays. Our fellow RVers were a great font of knowledge and gave us some good ideas for the rest of our trip.

Saturday morning was a crisp one with frost in the hills above us. We topped up our tanks with water and set off towards Flaming Gorge National Park. Our fellow campers had told us this was a must see. The drive there was another beauty and Ronda’s brakes got another beasting as we went from canyon to mountain top plateau time and again. As we came around a corner we finally saw ahead of us the Flaming Gorge Dam, or as Hoff kept calling it, Flamingo Park Dam. It was an impressive feat of engineering but to be honest, beyond that there wasn’t much to see. Another couple told us they’d spent three days here ‘boondogging”, which despite the naughty sounding name basically just means free camping. I’m not really sure what they did during those three days as, once we’d done a 5km run along the top of Red Canyon (just around the corner from the dam) we really felt like we had seen the place, so a snap decision was made over a lunch of cheese and ham wraps that we’d press on and gamble about where to stay.

The gamble paid off. Driving down off yet another mountain plateau, having navigated ourselves through dinosaur country (this area of Utah has one of the the highest concentrations of ancient fossils in the US) we spotted another lake ahead of us. Hoff was sure there was a campsite next to it and low and behold there was. We prayed it was open and pulled in to what was a beautiful little overlook. Only a few other campers where there and we settled down with a beer and a glass of wine, overlooking the lake as the sun went down into a beautiful sunset. The clear sky meant that the stars where out in force that night and we were in bed and asleep by 9pm (late for us). Little did we know that our sleep would be so disturbed…..but that’s for the next blog post, when we’ll tell you all a little bit more about life in an RV!