After a while the unusual loses its appeal

For the record Yellowstone was the first national park in the world and covers 3,468 square miles. There are sundry eco-systems in play and it is rated as ideal for hiking, fishing, mountain climbing etc and the areas is teeming with wild life. Our day-pass cost 25 dollars for the two of us in a car and was good for a week – superb value and even better for those who return there every year to see the sights which also include half of the total of the world’s geo-thermal features, most famous of which is Old Faithful.

We sat in an amphitheatre waiting for the world’s superstar geyser to perform. Eventually it started to bubble, more steam/smoke came out and then a succession of giant ejaculations leapt skywards perhaps 50 or 60 feet. To think it has been doing that 17 times a day at least since the times of Lewis and Clarke, if not Adam and Eve, is amazing. Yet after the jet dropped to ten feet, we got up and left. The fact is, as far as the eye could see there were holes belching out steam and smoke.

There are hundreds of these and their cousins, thermal springs. They are bizarre and amazing and awesome but once you have seen smoke and steam coming out of the ground a few times and stopped to look, it becomes commonplace. You drive along, looking for critters. There are creeks, streams, rivers, hills, mountains, rock formations and woods and every now and then those visions contain a sight of smoke and a smell of sulphur. They even belch by the river banks. Sometimes the smoke envelops the road.

At one visitors’ centre I heard successive inquiries as to what else Yellowstone had to offer. The officials are obviously familiar with the question saying: “So you are all geysered out?”

They are remarkable but after a few hours you have “done geysers”.

Earlier in our trip, we had headed round a bend in Custer Park and been presented with the sight of a hundred or so bison straggling across the road. It was remarkable seeing these beasts surrounding our car, even though they are supposed to be the most short-tempered and most dangerous animal in North America. We were informed by one man, who appeared to be the epitome of a be-whiskered cowboy, that if you see a bison with its tail up, it is either about to charge or discharge.

One day we arose at 6am and went back to Custer Park to see the annual buffalo round-up. They were all stunning experiences yet, when we were in Yellowstone a week later, we came round a bend only to exclaim: “Oh no. There are bleedin’ bison all over the road. That’s going to hold us up.”

At the northern visitors’ centre, the building was surrounded by a herd of elk. There were wardens monitoring them and telling pedestrians where to walk because elk too can be stroppy and if you get one of those horns heading your way, you are in trouble.

The next day, we were travelling through the centre of the park early in the morning. You quickly learn to pull up wherever there is a crowd of cars and people, because clearly they have spotted something.

We slowed down and seeing a man armed with a large telephoto returning to his car, we inquired as to what was on view.

“Just a whole bunch of elk,” he said.

We nodded our thanks and drove on.

We had done elk.

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