While the Boss is away

Hi there everyone,

It seems ages since I updated the Blog and I guess that's because my travelling partner has been home in Aus. I hope she's getting a good dose of sunshine because the temperature over here doesn't get much above 0C these days.

Unfortunately I don't have any pics this time but I'll try and fill you in on what's happened in the last couple of weeks.

Gae and Jess took off for Australia on Monday the 15th as planned and for once the plane left on time. They both arrived in Denver with enough time to change planes to LA and then they had a 2.5 hour wait in LA before flying to Aus. That was the plan!!!

Arrival in Denver was fine but then the "Ice Storm" that blanketed the southern states of the US, killing about 80 people, caused their connecting flight to be 2 hours late. You can imagine what they were thinking with only a 2.5 hour turn around in LA. Anyway as luck would have it Qantas organised a bus from one plane to the next, by passed all the security and they made it onto their respective planes with minutes to spare.

Luggage took a different route. 3 or 4 days after arriving in Australia all their luggage turned up at Jess' house in Victoria, not a lot of use to Gae. Anyway Jess sent Gae's off to Qld and everything ended up OK.

As for me being left all on my own, no way. The day after they left I jumped on a plane and was off to Salt Lake City for 9 days. That trip didn't quite go according to plan with my plane breaking down on the runway and being delayed for 3 hours until the next flight but I arrived safley.
As usual work got in the way of adventure but I did manage to spend the weekend swishing down the slopes of Brighton and Alta ski resorts in Salt Lake City. It was awesome, the snow was only 5 feet thick so the locals were complaining but I thought it was pretty good compared to Australia. I could hardly walk on Monday.

Thats about it for the last two weeks, I've just arrived home and will be back at work tomorrow. I think I'm off to the mine in Colerado next week so hopefully I'll get a chance to visit Steam Boat Springs and do a bit more swishing. I'll take the camera.

Catch you all soon.

Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse

Well we're back, and once again we've managed to fill in our weekend travelling around Wyoming. There's not a lot left that we haven't seen but we're really keen to see the difference between winter and summer.

Talk about winter, the following is an extract of a severe weather alert for our region over the next week. We don't have a single forecasted day over zero degrees C for the next seven days. Rememeber they are talking degrees F. At -30 F it will be -35 C

A STRONG COLD FRONT WILL MOVE THROUGH THE NORTHERN AND CENTRAL PLAINS TONIGHT. BEHIND THE FRONT...FRIGID ARCTIC AIR WILL SETTLE OVER THE AREA BRINGING WELL BELOW AVERAGE TEMPERATURES. BY FRIDAY... HIGH TEMPERATURES ARE ONLY EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM NEAR ZERO OVER NORTHEAST WYOMING...THE BLACK HILLS...AND NORTHWEST SOUTH DAKOTA...TO NEAR 10 ABOVE ZERO OVER FAR SOUTHWEST AND SOUTH CENTRAL SOUTH DAKOTA. WITH GUSTY NORTH WINDS THURSDAY INTO FRIDAY MORNING...WIND CHILL VALUES WILL DROP TO 20 TO 30 BELOW ZERO AT TIMES. SLIGHTLY WARMER TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED FOR THE WEEKEND...THOUGH HIGHS WILL STILL ONLY RANGE FROM 5 TO 15 ABOVE ZERO. LOW TEMPERATURES WILL BE AT OR BELOW ZERO THROUGH THE WEEKEND.

We're wondering if Gae and Jess will get out of the place on Monday. I think they are looking forward to some warmer weather.

On Friday we took off for Deadwood again, we are becoming regulars and the people where we stay remeber us now. We had a really nice night in Kevin Costners pub.

On Saturday we went to the Crazy Horse monument. It's the Indian answer to Mt Rushmore, carved in stone but much bigger. The picture of the indian on the horse in white below is what the finished sculpture will look like.




After Crazy Horse we moved across the Black Hills to Mt Rushmore. The displays on American history were really interesting and so were the local inhabitants who didn't seem to worry too much about us.






After Mt Rushmore we stayed the night in a town called Keystone. It was a really strange place, like a ghost town because all the shops and restaurants were 'Closed for the Season'. It's one of the places we'll go back to in summer to see what the difference is.




On Sunday we left Keystone and went to the Wind Cave National Park and did a cave tour which was great fun. The cave was on 4 levels and had a total of about 185 miles of surveyed tunnels. There was still a lot to be surveyed so no-one really knows how big or long it is.
There were also a lot of furry little friends on the surface, similar to Devils Tower.




On our way back into Gillette that night we just had to stop and take a picture of the sunset. Hope you like it.



Not sure how I'll go keeping up the blog over the next weeks with my travelling partner back in Aus. I haven't any travel plans and the weather isn't looking great but we'll see.

Christmas and Yellowstone

Hi again everyone,
We hope you have had a great christmas and a very happy new year. We have, although new years eve was uncharacteristically quiet.

We spent 3 nights in the Bighorn mountains over Christmas. We arrived on the Saturday afternoon and there was plenty of snow so we were sure it was going to be a white christmas. On Sunday we went snow mobiling for 7 hours and it was a lot harder than it looked. Unfortunately it was only early in the season and the trails had not been groomed yet so it was a lot of hard work but good fun when you finally got going. It was spoilt a bit by the weather which was windy with snow showers throughout the day. The next morning (Christmas day) we could hardly move we were so stiff and sore.

Christmas day was pretty quiet. We were surprised that there was no big celebration but we think Thanksgiving has more of that than christmas. We spent the morning opening presents that Jess had bought from everyone in Australia so thanks for that. We then went out and made a very short, fat snowman. I don't think we would have won any awards but it was good fun anyway. Jess and Gae also had a go at making snow angles.
Christmas lunch was a buffet at the lodge which was nice, all you can eat but no turkey !!





On Boxing day we were in the car and off across Montana to West Yellowstone on the western edge of Yellowstone National Park. We really liked a town called Bozeman on the north west corner of the park and the drive from there to West Yellowstone was spectacular.
West Yellowstone was a fun place, plenty of snow and you can ride your snowmobile around the streets as if it was a motorbike.
On Wednesday we had organised for a snow coach tour of the park. This was done in an old canadian coach built in 1957 for work in northern Canada and then relocated to Yellowstone for the tourists. Scenery again was great and there were plent of elk and bison for us to look at. Unfortunately Yogi and Boo Boo must have been asleep and we didn't see any wolves or moose.




Yellowstone is a bit like the north island of New Zealand with all the mud pools and geysers although Gae and I thought New Zealand was a bit more impressive (we wouldn't say that here). Stopped and watched 'Old Faithful' do it's thing which was pretty good.




On Thursday we had organised for a snow mobile tour of the park and we were lucky enough to have a guide for just the 3 of us so it was our own private tour. The snow mobiling was much easier than Bear Lodge as the trails were nicely groomed and we were able to get away from the crowds and get a bit closer to nature. On one occasion we had to ride through a herd of bison on the trail which was a bit scary, they were close enough to touch.






Friday was a 'rest' day so it was off to the shops for some retail therapy. Gae has begun collecting small stuffed animals so I guess the grand kids will benefit one day. We also went to a Grissly and Wolf Display Centre where nuisance animals are relocated if they are causing too much trouble out and about.




On Friday night Jess started to come down with a sore throat and unfortunately had to spend Saturday in bed. Gae and I hired two snowmobiles and took off on our own through the national forest that borders the park. It was a great day and heaps of fun.
On Sunday (New Years eve) we were back in the car for the 9 hour drive back to Gillette. We drove the whole way through snow as there had been a big storm come through while we were in West Yellowstone. Just about all of the northern USA was a blanket of white. Suffice to say that after 9 hours in the car and Jess still not 100% we passed on the new years celebration and were all in bed by 9:30.
Next week we are off to South Dakota to look at Mt Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monuments so will update the blog on our return.

I've attached another web album that shows a few more photos of our tip. Click on Gae and Jess below and select 'Slideshow'

Hope you enjoy it.

Christmas in Yellowstone