June 4th 2008

Morning

I'm sat outside the showers at Grand Teton NP waiting for Jenn; in these major tourist attractions you have to pay extra for everything, including showers. $3.50 each (which admittedly is only about 50p or something - but we are on a tight budget). I wouldn't mind as much if it was even vaguely warmer than me, but getting up cold and getting into a colder shower is, well, camping I suppose.

It's the only thing that is camping as I remember it though. As a kid camping was about slow days, swimming in rivers, singing around a campfire (not that there was ever a campfire but I still remember it that way) - maybe a walk to the pub where we could play cards and other games. If being good at pool and darts (and modest too) was a sign of a wasted youth it doesn't feel like it.

Camping now in America is so different. We mostly arrive late after all the hermits have disappeared into their RVs. And there're only so many (should I say no many) card games you can play with two people. Most nights we spend gathering firewood so we can cook a baked potato wrapped in foil or stick a tin of soup in the embers. If everyone else wasn't already cosied up in their RVs, they might think, "those guys know what they're doing". We don't though; we always use our wood up too early and have to go to bed and run the engine to keep warm.

Evening

Teton is very picturesque which means you see lots of postcards that put your own photos to shame; but you can't look at mountains all day and although we saw some cool animals (elk, moose & calf, bison/buffalo & calves and a bald eagle) the really cool ones (bears, wolves, bull-moose) only came out for the show-offs who don't quit about how they saw a mother and baby bear have a picnic with a pack of black wolves. Why do they only come out for annoying people?

So we headed up to Yellowstone - they are pretty much the same place. I was hoping we'd have to pay a eparate fee though so we'd be getting an even better bargain with our pass but apparently it's a joint fee
for both parks.

After Grand Teton, it's a pretty underwhelmingy unspectacular park for the most part. But it has the geysers which made up for it. However it's forecast to snow tonight so we decided that instead of getting grumpy (could you tell?) because of all this horrible weather that we are so unprepared for, we'd head south towards Mormon capital, Utah.

We just stopped for a drink at Taco Bell. It was a bathroom break really, and I only got a coke so it doesn't break the fast-food fast. The girl gave me it for free - must be the accent, I better be careful, we all know how that ended last time, and in Utah I don't think the fact that I'm already married would stop em. After that we
spotted an RV park behind a motel so I went in and that woman let us park up for the night for nowt too! Isn't this how cults draw you in, being super nice? Scary.

Tomorrow we're going to the salt flats where all the land speed records were achieved. If I was a kid from the 50s that'd mean something to me. It should be cool though. Apparently it creates an optical illusion because it's so perfectly aligned with the curvature of the earth.