14.-20.05.2007: Beaver - Salt Lake City - Logan Scenic BW - Fossil Buttes NM - Grand Teton NP - Yellowstone NP - Mesa Scenic BW We put another coat of roof sealant on first thing Monday morning and then cleaned everything. We left the campground shortly after midday and went to Burger King because we had won a sticker for a free whopper! Then we headed north to Salt Lake City. The next day we went to Summerhayes where Helen bought her violin. We were hoping to see Tess and Christian, but Tess only works there weekends now and Christian has returned to Mexico. Helen got a better chin rest for free which means she doesn't have to use the extra padding she had attached onto the shoulder rest. The sales assistant killed himself laughing when he saw Helen's resin with a deep groove in it and said he had never seen anything like it before! So Helen got some new resin and a better pitch pipe. Then onto the music shop where Kirsten downloaded "String Explorer" onto her USB. We have it on CD but the CD had half the music missing. Now we have everything. Helen also bought some new music and we got a new Smart Music CD because the last one didn't work once we'd registered. We had to return the following day to exchange the pitch pipe because the first one was out of tune!!! Afterwards we drove north and along the Logan Scenic Byway which is in a beautiful area, on a windy road following a stream through high canyon walls. We found an idyllic spot next to the river for the night. We continued along the byway the following day and went to Fossil Buttes National Monument just across the border in Wyoming. It is only a small place and the entrance is free! We watched a video and saw some 50 million year old fossils. It was worth the visit. We headed north to get to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. On the way all the national forest campgrounds were closed. But we managed to find a spot at a trailhead. The next morning a moose came to say hello to us whilst we were eating breakfast! We drove into Grand Teton National Park and stopped at Jenny Lake for a short walk. We have been here before when the park was barely open and there was still snow everywhere. So this time we wanted to visit the places that were still closed the last time we were here. Huge clouds with streaks of lightning were coming over the northern peaks and yet we were still in the sunshine. It made for good photos. We ended up driving through some rain but by the time we had driven into Yellowstone National Park, we were back in the sun!!! We went straight to the Old Faithful visitor centre and got times for the various geyser eruptions. We had to do a quick, sharp walk to Riverside Geyser to catch the eruption at 5-20pm. Daisy and Grotto geysers were erupting as we sprinted past! We walked up to Morning Glory to see the colourful pool. Unfortunately, it is changing colour because of the rubbish that has been thrown into it which has cooled down the water. Now it is only warm enough for the orange and brown algae instead of the beautiful blue algae which need hotter water. We managed to get a free shower at the Old Faithful Lodge and then we drove out of the park and stopped right at the boundary fence for the night. We got up early the next morning and watched as a wolf walked passed our motor home! We drove back into the park and concentrated on the parts we hadn't seen when we were here last time when most of the roads were still closed. The west road was blocked by huge bison and we also saw bald eagles. Our next stop was Gibbon Falls where a man from the car just in front of us showed us a photo of a Grizzly that had just crossed the road in front of him. So we had just missed it! We carried on to Artists paint pots and Norris Geyser Basin which has really green water from the geysers. Congress Pool is a milky blue colour. We had a wonderful time at the Canyon village area where Inspiration Point has wonderful multi-coloured, steep bare slopes going down to the river. We stopped at various look out points and walked down to a wonderful waterfall at Lower Falls (308 ft, 93m). After stopping to see everything on the way, we drove to Old Faithful and were lucky - we only had to wait 7 minutes for it to erupt. We went to see numerous other geysers on our way out and Kirsten set up her tripod to take photos of the two of us. On one of them, she had to do a slalom run through lots of tourists to get to Helen before the photo was taken! On the way out of the park there was a huge queue of traffic in front of us due to the Bison on the road. But as we got closer we realized why there was such a queue - there were three tiny young Bison with their mothers! One could hardly stay on its feet yet and was still very wobbly! They were really cute. Unfortunately, one idiot driver got impatient and tried to overtake the queue of vehicles. He raced past and got within inches of the baby and tried to nudge it out of the way!!! We couldn't believe it! We parked at the same spot for the night and on Sunday morning we watched as a man with his dog walked into the National park area, past a sign saying dogs were prohibited! At that moment a ranger drove passed. The ranger pulled over and raced after the man! He was brought back out of the park and wasn't happy when he got a fine!!! We couldn't find the library in West Yellowstone, so we gave up and headed into Idaho and along Mesa Scenic Byway. We stopped at a really nice waterfall (Upper Falls, 109 ft). There were also huge Salmon flies that have two sets of wings like a bi-plane. After stopping at the lower falls, we found an area off the road that had obviously been used for free camping in the past and was perfect for us.