I think this may be a little reiteration but I’m trying to write this blog a little differently so I’ve picked up a little in the past.

On our road trip across America, Bex and I delved into as many of the multitude of national parks that we could.
The USA is a huge country but there are tons of things to do, so from state to state there is always lots to do.

I think I mentioned Olympic park in Washington state and how wet we got in the rain forest there. It being just a highlight in a huge area with amazing scenery around every turn.

So I’ll move on to Glacier national park, which turned out to be my personal favorite.
It was beautiful with huge mountains with dramatic waterfalls bordered by the plains of central north America. I really liked that you can walk around and see much of the park, the accessibility was great. The trails are well marked, have great maps and are maintained to ensure minimal erosion and future damage. To top it off the camps were great and we saw lots of wildlife, moose, elk, mountain goats, big horn, black bears and grizzly bears.

After this we visited Yellowstone national park, USA’s, and possibly the world’s first national park. It is world famous and it is magnificent. It is also quite dangerous. You can only walk in designated areas, not doing so can result in harm from the scolding waters flowing beneath the ground and spouting out at random times. We weren’t able to camp at all sites due to the dangers of the grizzly bears before hibernation, which presented another danger. But the geysers are breath taking, and there is nowhere else like it in the world, at least not on this scale. It isn’t the worlds largest volcano outside of the oceans got no reason. There are more bison than you could hope to count, as they brush by your car using the road as if it were a track they use everyday. With the enormity of the park, you rarely ever get close, if you are lucky enough to see the rarer wildlife. We happened to stop to see what a huge crowd was watching, and upon looking through somebodies telescope I saw a grizzly sleeping on a deceased bison, with a wolf trying to move it and get as the meat, no chance. So it is wonderful and everybody has to see it, but I think if I went again it would be in spring.
***and ask for the Boiling River, where you can swim in a river of icy cold water where the run off from the hot springs joins it in whirlpools of varying temperatures. Some elk even ran off with some guys bag

Grand Teton parks shoots up out of the lakes almost before you leave to the south of Yellowstone. It’s mesmerizing snow capped peaks run in a line, nothing around it comes close to grab your attention.
We found a camp by the lake and enjoyed a cheese toasty over a camp fire in an almost full campsite even in the colder days of October. In the morning we drove around, enjoying the woods in autumn and seeing a black bear by the road.
A small walk turned out into me practically dragging Bex to the meadows between the mountains for a beautiful view over the area, we didn’t have time to reach a peak, and a flurry of snow and a cold wind pushed us back down into the warm valley.
And then the rain began, but we stopped by the famous Jackson for a delicious dinner before a horrid drive into fog and snow deep into the night.

We snuck in a trip to a small state park called in Thermopolis Hot springs in Wyoming, Which was a lovely free relaxing spa on the drive.

We finally made it to Mount Rushmore after an epic thunderstorm turned the South Dakota sky to fire as the sun set. I think it probably looks more impressive at night, floodlit and with fewer tourists. It did make
Me laugh, the sight of four heads carved into a mountain. But this is America and anything and everything goes.
What struck me is that is isn’t so big in real life as the photos lead you to believe.

We also saw the Devil’s tower, a minor stop for an interesting geological relic from an extinct volcano.

A non national park we passed by by declined to enter was Crazy Horse. So back in the fourties, before Rushmore had been an idea, a local tribesman had decided to remember his ancestors and create a monument. He decided to carve into a mountain a horse with his rider atop. I wonder where the idea for Rushmore came from? Though I may be wrong.
Well 60 years later and the monument is barely done, maybe not even 25% done. And done as it is not, and viewable from the highway, we decided against the $15 entrance fee. Though if you have the cash I think you should pay up, to help the endeavor on towards completion, sometime around the year 2150.

There may be other parks I’ve forgotten we saw, and there are several we missed, but we managed to fit in a lot on our drive across the Northern United States.

So Bex and I made the most of a $80 year pass to the parks, and it’s still got over half a year left and is for sale if anybody wants it?

On a note, I can’t put pictures online as I’m writing this on my old iPod as I travel around Mexico.