68.0 Bison Bill

It would seem that Buffalo do not exist in North America. Nothing to do with them becoming extinct here or anything like that, they just never existed here. Buffalo only exist in parts of Asia and Africa. In North America, as in parts of Europe, it's Bison. So what's all this tosh about Buffalo Bill? This is important as we are now in Montana and Wyoming which is 'buffalo' country. But it isn't; it's bison country but there's not one panel advertising Bison Bill or any of his relatives.

Instead of moving north from Seattle,  which would have taken us directly into Canada, we stayed in the USA and rode east to Yellowstone National Park. To see, amongst other things, the bison. Yellowstone is not next door to Seattle - it took us 3 days to get there and we crossed Idaho, the self-proclaiming 'potato' State - we thought they originated in South America? We also had rain...

So having seen some 'timid' geysers in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile at New Year we came to see the real thing here in Yellowstone. It was probably a good idea that we ended up doing it this way round as we might have been a tad disappointed in the Chilean version otherwise. Yellowstone is both huge and busy and we visited it on a number of occasions.

The park is home to bears, black and grizzly varieties - not on view when we were there, as well as wolves, deer/elk and the famous bison. We think we saw a wolf and asked a Park Ranger if it was one. It was, if that is what we wanted it to be, was the answer. So perhaps we saw a wolf, a coyote or a big fox. But definitely a few foxes later on - but we get those in our garden at home. As for the bison, well they are very difficult to photograph as you can't see their eyes. There are also rather a lot of them about and, not being able to see their eyes, you don't know whether they are eying you up or not when they get close. They might well be vegetarian but they might also find it fun to try and mount a motorbike.

The geysers are the big thing in the park. There is a viewing gallery for Old Faithful which faithfully erupts every 100 minutes or so. Some of the other geysers in the park were equally as impressive if not more so, but less predictable. There were also hot springs with bacteria giving them unbelievable colour. And the ones with more steam than water and some just bubbling away. They spring up all over the park so you end up doing a lot of mileage whilst there - amid the forests, streams, rivers, gorges, canyons and waterfalls. It's big, it's busy but at least being on a bike means we don't queue to park...