By Geraint Williams
We left Denver to go to Rapid City South Dakota. . It was a very long journey but very interesting. We went via Cheyenne, Shawnee, Laramie, Custer and the Black hills. We saw lots of wild life en route, plenty of Gazelles and Antelope, and a few Bison. Some of us tried buffalo burgers that evening.
We went to Bearland, where we were able to see lots of the local wildlife, including bears, wolves, otters, badger, coyote, porcupine, and white foxes. It was extremely windy, and felt very cold all day. Then we went to Mount Rushmore, where we saw the sculpture of the 4 American Presidents carved out of the mountain. We stopped in Keystone to do some shopping and finished up the day with a Chinese meal in a restaurant.
We had to get up early today, to set off for a 500 mile journey to Jackson Wyoming. It took us about 12 hours, but what a journey. The variety of scenery was astounding and we really didn’t get bored. We went past some historic places like Sundance and Buffalo. We drove over the Bighorn mountains which were covered in snow, and the views were incredible., through semi desert, and into the Yellowstone national park. We once again had encounters with the local wildlife, though not too close, elk, deer, bear, all put in an appearance, and the scenery was once again amazing. The colours were unbelievable and the sunset over the lakes with the snow capped mountains in the background was fantastic. We arrived at our hotel late, but found that we had each got accommodation in log cabins, which was exciting. We had a lovely ‘Tapas’ style meal before retiring to bed.
After our long journey, today is a rest day. We had a lovely cooked breakfast and then went across the road to the Jackson visitor centre. We spent some time watching a film about the area and doing some therapeutic shopping. Wandering into the town we found a shop that took pictures of people dressed up in cowboy outfits, so we had some done – what a sight! After lunch we retired back to the hotel – travelling is so tiring.
On Tuesday evening we tried to go to the local cowboy bar, but it was too full to take us all (and they thought Jane looked under 21 – which was a problem! Not for Jane, I think she was pleased really) so we went to a Mexican place where we had Burritos and chimichangas – real cowboy food.
We went around Yellowstone National Park. We saw lots of deer and elk, and we made our way to “old faithful”, which is a Geyser that is so regular you can know exactly when it is going to explode. We had our lunch there, watching the water blast up into the air. When we left in the cars we had to give way to Bison crossing the road – they were bigger than us. We went on to the hot springs, and had a close look at one of them. The steam coming off it was so bad we couldn’t see the path some times. Yet again there was fantastic scenery all around us, it will live with us in our memories – it really brought the cowboy films to life for us.
We did a lot of travelling. 12 hours driving, crossing through 4 states. Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Colorado. The scenery was so different, and so interesting we didn’t even get bored. There were deserts. Plains, mountains with snow, prairie, and enormous lakes. It was quite late when we arrived at our hotel in Durango.
Durango is a railway town. So we went to visit the train museum and station which is an historic monument. We also did some shopping. It was Halloween, and we saw lots of people dressed up in costume. Our waiters and waitresses at breakfast were dressed up, our breakfast waitress was little red riding hood, and the barman was one of the undead! In the evening we went to a little bar, where there was live music( Playing the blues) and many of the customers were cowboys (really!!) We don’t remember much about the meal, we were too busy watching the cowboys and listening to the live band – heaven.
Today we went to Mese Verde. Which is a national park where we saw ancient ruins, houses built into caves, huge canyons, breathtaking scenery, yet more deer and our first wild turkeys. Later James and Michael sat down to help with writing up this diary, and a gentleman came over to ask us what we were doing, it turned out that he was a member of the Navajo tribe who have a reservation nearby (James was in heaven!)
Today is a travelling day. Not so far this time, only about 300 miles, so we had time to go to Church for those who wanted to. It was an interesting service, very informal and very much a small town church. They gave us a big welcome. The scenery on our way to Colorado Springs was different again – how can a country have so many different sorts of scenery? We drove through Mountains which were wooded and had snow, through to plains covered in yellowing grass. Through a number of small 1 street towns, and through larger towns which they called cities. We arrived in our posh hotel, that has so many facilities they call it a resort.