Close Encounters

Lower Falls Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone is great for lots of things but very little phone signal or internet so there are a lot of posts to catch up on. Driving around the vast and varied landscape was an interesting experience. its a busy place, and unless you are quite fit and at the moment we are not - its hard to get away from the masses of tourists. we did make the trek up Mount Washburn - or rather Dr Fred did, I only went about halfway, stunning views cross the park but very busy - and quite a steep hike on a sore knee!!!

view from Mount Washburn

However this does have advantages as when there's a crowd it usually means there is something interesting to be seen. We were crawling along with the masses to see the lower Falls - wonderful waterfall pictures at the beginning of post... First we spotted two single bull bison just ambling along the grassland.

first bison sighting

which we were very excited about and then we saw a whole herd of Bison with babies and lots of young adult males who were rolling about in the dust

Bison Herd

we saw loads of Elk and deer as well so our wildlife spotting quota was looking good.

Day 3 saw us take a rest day, Dr Fred was a bit fed up of driving, and weak from the Mount Washburn experience... so we just did a small local hike near the Indian Creek Camping we were staying at.... also we had had a bad night with temperatures dropping to below zero - unusual for this time of year but I got up in the night and the tent was solid on the outside with ice!!! We were frozen, sleeping with as many clothes as we could fit into the sleeping bags like mummies trussed up... Sleeping in the tent is starting to wear a little thin!!!

We had a nice walk around the local terrain, we were about half an hour out on the trail when we met a sheriff ranger chappie, looking very smart in his pristine uniform, with a shiney badge and jaunty little hat, I wanted to take his photograph but he was quite cross with us as we didn't have bear spray with us so I decided not to ask!!! We didn't get eaten by a bear! I sang loud campfire songs to warn them we coming.. Even Dr Fred wanted to run away!

The cold nights were taking there toll so we booked into a motel in Thermopolis which was on route to our next booked eclipse campsite, so this morning we packed up a damp tent and headed out of the park. We agreed to stop and look at the mud volcano and Dragons lair it would be our last geothermal experience for the time being

mud volcano

dragons lair, and it sounded like a dragon too!!!

Both very impressive but what really made the day was the bison wandering down the road, the first one right next to the I could have touched it only sensibly I kept the window wound up and had a split second as it ambled past and we were driving to get a picture

Bison out of car window

then about 10 minutes down the road was a second bison, he decided he would cross right in front of us so I was able to get a rather bizarre but close up and personal picture of Dr Fred with said beast...

Bison just sauntering past our car

the excitement mounted to be completely finished to a frenzy by the sight of a Grizzly bear feeding on a road kill elk across the way. There was a meadow and a river between us so the pictures are not amazing but he did look good through the binoculars and I was very, very happy to have seen a Grizzly in Yellowstone.

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful. There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

Autumnal Garden Days

I love these (rare) warm sunny late summer days and there is all sorts of lovely things going on in my garden... I counted 12 red admiral butterflies whizzing around the over grown ivy which I had been about to hack down but then left until the flutterbies have finished with it... The late blooms add a dash of colour and the daisy strewn lawn is littered with autumnal leaves, debris from my brief half an hour of slash and burn and the stone wall is covered in glorious soft moss all shiny and tactile with a few late nasturtiums loitering. I've hacked out the brambles for this year, sadly I missed the fruit as we were away, ditto the strawberries, we never seem to get the fruit before the birds so I've made space and moved the plants that were getting swamped and so not performing to their potential - hopefully next year they will literally blossom now they have light and room to flourish.

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished... it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh... I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic! there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....

Planet Ruby Starrs

Search This Blog