carry on camping with abi and andrew

tuesday 22nd september: glacier park

today bert and i cycled from apgar campsite up the road to do a small walk called the trail of the cedars. when i say small i really mean it, it was around 1mile this walk. but the cycle ride each way was 14 miles, which justified the smallness of the walk i think. plus don’t forget we were cycling on the falcon death trap and the old mountain bike, so it was more of an effort than the kind of bike ride i’m used to. the bikes coped fine, luckily there weren’t any major hills, up or down hill - down hill on the falcon is pretty scary as the brakes scream and cry out for mercy, and the headset shakes like there’s an earthquake going on, and you feel quite precarious on the narrow handlebars.

anyway there were no incidents other than tired muscles as we hadn’t done much exercise like this for a while. we stopped regularly to either look at the view, de-robe as we warmed up, or eat our cereal bar snacks. bert did a u-turn to take some close up pictures of some grizzly bear poo he had seen on the road - it was huge poo with lots of berries in, you could see it from miles away. we didn’t see the grizzly bear that made it.

the walk itself is on a wooden walkway or paved paths, through a forest, which has cedars, western hemlock, douglas fir, and another tree whose name i can’t remember.

there haven’t been fires in that part of the forest for over 500 years which means it has these trees in it rather than the more quick to regrow spindly pines you get in areas of frequent burning. hemlock has this crazy deep bark which must be half a foot thick, it’s very strange.

i made sure not to accidentally eat any of the hemlock trees in case this is where hemlock the poison comes from. we ate our sandwiches whilst looking at a typical montana view of a mountain with a river in front of it. some people came along and said hi and had we seen any animals and bert launched into the whole 5 bears and moose story from our big hiking trip. he likes telling stories, but i got the feeling these people didn’t have that much time to listen to them all in great detail.
us sitting in a tree.

we looked at cedar leaves carefully and compared them with pine leaves, we looked at a wall with water dripping down it, and at all the moss that grows on the stones and trees there, and watched the sunbeams coming through the forest in a narnia type way, and it was all very beautiful.

a cedar leaf at close quarters

then we cycled back to apgar on our deathtraps, stopping at lake macdonald lodge on the way. this lodge is very old (in american terms anyway, built in early 1900s), and backs on to lake macdonald, in fact that is the front as that used to be the only way to get there before the road was built. we looked in the gift shop and took a photo of me with a big cuddly bear.

we got back to apgar just as we were getting tired from the cycling, i wouldn’t have wanted to carry on any further on the falcon, nor bert on his bike. we were pretty impressed with our active day and rewarded ourselves with an ice cream and bert had an espresso but only after we’d had an argument about what an espresso actually was, he seemed to think i didn’t know what it was and that there wouldn’t be enough for us to share it, i said i only wanted a tiny bit anyway and i knew that espressos were tiny to begin with yes. he dumped his ice cream in it so it was no longer an espresso anyway but a coffee ice cream.

we got back to our camp and abi had left us a note on our door which was very exciting. she and andrew turned up around an hour later. andrew is a friend of hers that she met after she’d left me last year in belize, and gone to america to do a trek in the grand canyon. weirdly it was pretty much a year ago to the day that abi and i had gone our separate ways after our 2 months travelling together, and as well a year to the day that she had met andrew in america.

it was really really cool to see her again, and we talked about england, and what people were doing, and about our travels, and lots of other things too as we cooked our hotdogs on the campfire. except abi couldn’t eat the hotdogs as they were chicken based ones and she has a fatal allergy to chicken, which i had forgotten, so she had to eat bacon.

we cooked veggies on the fire too which tasted great but it’s hard to control how burnt they are getting. andrew is from england but lives in germany, he used to live in montreal until last year. he designs windmills, as in wind farm wind mills, which is a pretty cool job if you ask me. he used to sail for great britain, which we never got round to talking to him more about, and he also had some pretty scary stories about flying, like one where they had to land in the brace position as a bit of the plane had fallen off. he is really into photography, as is abi, so we all went to lake macdonald which was just round the corner, to take photos of the sunset. i had bought abi a present which was a small candle holder made of a bear holding a little piece of tree, which is where the candle goes.

she had brought me a sticker, and some things from mamma mia pepinillo in england, contact lenses, and a new camera as an early birthday present, which was really exciting, as we only have a not very good little olympus one. this one is turquoise, my favourite colour. so it was all very exciting and fun and then we all slept in the rv, and realized we had run the battery down which wasn’t so good - this happens if you use the lights/anything else that runs off the battery, without making sure the battery isn’t going flat. whilst driving obviously the battery charges itself from the engine but we hadn’t driven for a while. we vaguely panicked about this but then fell asleep.

wednesday 23rd september: kalispell to butte, montana
the battery had come back to life, hooray! panic over. bert went off back to kalispell to go to an appointment he had, and me abi and andrew went off to the trail of the cedars, to do another walk from there to avalanche lake. this was around 5 miles round trip i think, which was a nice amount for the morning. abi had injured her knee playing netball recently so was wary of walking too much, but it seemed like it was doing fine. she even climbed a tree that had rotted away in the middle.
avalanche lake was beautiful, like the lakes we had seen on our hike to the belly river a few weeks ago, really glassy and still, with the whole mountain reflected in it like a mirror.

a man told us he had seen lots of grizzly bear poo nearby, so we had a little panic, but then got over it. i told abi and andrew about uncle sid and his pet bears, and andy said what a cool story especially when he learnt the names of the bears. i said yeah isn’t amos a cool name. then realized he meant andy, because that is also his name. he thought i was being really sarcastic but really i did mean isn’t amos a cool name. i think maybe it was one of those things that are funny if you were there, but not when you explain them, but it was funny honestly. another thing about andrew (the person, not the bear cub) was that he had met the world’s tallest man on a plane. this man was 8foot 4, the tallest man before that was 8foot 1, this new man had been just discovered in turkey in a small village, and had previously never had clothes that fit, and had never worn shoes, but the guiness world record people had got this sorted for him and were looking after him. andrew showed us a photo of the tallest man in the world with 2 air hostesses, which made the air hostesses look like dwarves. perhaps it was actually that they were the smalles air hostesses in the world, standing with a normal man. andrew said it wasn’t though.

we made sandwiches by a river after we’d finished the walk, and skimmed some stones, and i commented that i didn’t think i’d ever cut cheese and tomato for a sandwich directly onto my jeans before, and that it seemed to work quite well really. we looked at some big ants, and talked about penicillin. i said wasn’t it invented from bread mould, but abi said said it was something to do with a lemming coughing onto a dish. i had misheard and actually it was fleming that invented penicillin, not a lemming. again it may have been funny just if you were there. i thought fleming would have been busy writing all those james bond novels, but he was obviously a multi-talented man.

we met up with bert in kalispell, who said the doctor had told him he was in very good health and had the fitness of a man half his age. this is good to know. we said goodbye to abi and andrew, and the plan was that we’d all reconvene in yellowstone park, which is in wyoming, the state directly south of montana. about a mile of yellowstone is in montana actually, but the majority of it is not. we weren’t exactly sure how we’d communicate as bert and i don’t have phones and abi and andrew do but they don‘t always work, but we figured we’d leave a message for each other at the old faithful lodge by old faithful geyser in the park. bert said this is what people used to do in the olden days, ie pre mobile phone days. we hoped there was such a place called the old faithful lodge.

on our way from kalispell, we stopped off at kirk’s house as he had some apples and beer for us and a hang gliding video for bert. he has a house up a mountain, where you could launch a hang glider from right there, it has an amazing view over the whole flathead valley. on the way to kirk’s house, bert had pointed out a buffalo jump, which is where the indians used to herd buffalos up and get them to fall off the cliff to the plain below, which is really quite mean, but they needed the buffalo for food. it’s a bit misleading calling it a buffalo jump, as that implies the buffalos chose to go there and have a good old jump, whereas actually it should be called a buffalo killing area. did you know bison is just another word for buffalo, i didn’t until now. we carried on south to missoula, then to butte where we spent the night in walmart carpark - you can park there the night in your rv for free, which is really a good thing to know about as there are walmarts everywhere, and we are always looking for free things. i guess walmart figure that the people parked there will buy things from walmart, which we did one day but not every time. it’s not exactly scenic, but it is very handy.

our rv only has an old stereo system with a tape player that plays out of one speaker, the one on the driver’s side. we had bought some tapes from thrift shops which really took me back to my youth thinking about tapes, and how i used to record songs from the top 40 on the radio each sunday on to a tape and then listen to them during the week. especially that time that bryan adams was at number one for 16 weeks, i’d run upstairs during dinner to put it on to record around 7pm when the top 40 finished. and i’d record it again the next week, in case i happened to get it for a bit longer if they didn’t start speaking over it so soon before it had finished. on our rv stereo you put the tape in and the tape player goes mental for a few minutes, and you have to press all the buttons for a while until it calms down and decides to do its job and just play the tape for you. it’s quite annoying, but i suppose it adds personality to the rv.

another thing i thought about on the drive today and discussed with bert but neither of us had any answers, was a lexical question to do with rivers, lakes and mountains. my question is why is it mount everest, but teakettle mountain? or the river thames, but yellowstone river? or lake havasu, but flathead lake? our best guess was that it just depends who got round to naming it first and their own personal preference. whether or not there is an answer, i like the fact that i noticed it and have recorded it here for more people to ponder over.

thursday 24th september: butte, montana to west yellowstone, wyoming
bert got up at 4am and started driving, so we would get the rest of the way to yellowstone in time to hook up with abi and andrew, even though we didn’t know how far they had got on their drive yesterday and where they were now etc. bert figured it would be better to be in yellowstone nice and early to sort things out. he is good at things like that, like being early and organised for things. so i rolled around trying not to fall out of bed and thinking blimey this is a bit strange. it’s like when you’re on a night train or a night bus and you try to sleep but then you think that the bus/train is veering off the road/tracks, because it seems to be so strange to travel lying down and your brain gets in a muddle. so i kept waking up and hoping everything was ok up in the front, which seemed like a long way away from the bedroom at the back. i eventually got up around 7, as i was getting a bit tired of rolling around panicking whilst trying to sleep. we got to west yellowstone, the town to the west just outside of yellowstone, at around 8 and found a payphone to call abi and andrew from but couldn’t get them on their mobiles. we rang old faithful inn, who said they weren’t a message centre thank you very much. we went for a muffin and a coffee and drove on into old faithful to investigate things. on the way down there we passed tons of geysers and bubbling bits of ground and pools and mud pools.



we realised that i pronounce geyser - geezar - like with the meaning of old man - and bert pronounces it gi-zer - like apparently it is supposed to be pronounced. i don’t think there is a ruling on which is correct so i kept pronouncing it my way.

we found the old faithful lodge, there is an inn, a lodge and a snow lodge, and we left a message for abi and andrew, there was no messages for us. we left our message saying we were camping at madison campground and to come and find us. we watched old faithful geyser going off, which was pretty cool - lots of water shoots up in to the air and lots of steam pours out - we got a shower from the water as the wind was blowing our direction.

then we drove back to madison campground to check in. when we got there there was a message from abi and andrew saying they were camping there and what pitch they were in. cool, so we went to find them, but they had gone off again in the car. so we sat in the rv and bert rested as he was tired from his crazy early driving day and his flu and pneumonia shots he’d had the day before.

i looked at my new camera and took some photos. the landscape of yellowstone is totally different to glacier - it’s got big wide huge yellowy plains, wide flat blue rivers, herds of buffalos off in the distance like you see in wildlife documentaries. it has mountains too but not great big huge ones like in glacier park.

abi and andrew found us that evening and we went to their campsite for camp fire dinner - pasta and pork and veggies. turns out they had left the note at the campsite without having got our one from the lodge, but by chance we were all camping at the same place, which was funny.

friday 25th september: madison campground to fishing bridge campground, yellowstone park
up at 545am to go and see animals - the best time to see them is early morning, or evening, this is when they are moving around, eating and the like. apparently bears are moving around getting food to fill up with before hibernating, and it is rutting season for elks, so it’s a good time generally to see animals. the first thing we saw was a coyote or wolf crossing the road, too dark to get a good photo. then we saw a herd of elks - they are like big deer, not as big as a moose (which we still haven’t seen), around the size of a horse. the men ones have antlers. they are very majestic animals. the males (bull elks) seem to hang out with a big group of cow ones, as they are looking for girlfriends, and they trot around them herding them up and watching them eat grass, whilst deciding which one to ask out on a date.

they bugle every now and then, which is when they make a big loud kind of trumpetty noise, which apparently is a sign of their size and strength and prestige etc - to attract the females and to ward off other bull elks from their pitch.

we watched all this for a while, then bert spotted a buffalo on his own on the other side of the road. i had read that buffalos are dangerous and have gored many visitors, so we didn’t go close to him. buffalos are very cool, they just mosey around hoovering up the grass, they have big heads and a hump which gives their head a kind of snow plowing power.

after all this excitement we went back to ours for pancakes and bacon and to look at our photos. we then set off to fishing bridge campground in the east of yellowstone, but on getting 20 miles or so away from it, the traffic was all being turned around due to a fire blowing over the road. they aren’t allowed to put out fires that have started naturally, this one had been started by lightning striking the ground a few days earlier. (another law of yellowstone is that you’re not allowed to imitate a wolf howl noise). this is when we saw the huge pyrocumulus cloud which i put a picture of in an earlier blog. so we went back to old faithful to have some drinks and play cards, and keep an eye on the situation via the ranger information.

an artistic shot of my camera reflected in my shades, taken whilst having a drink at old faithful.

bert would make a good ranger we decided, and it is what he would have been if he hadn’t been into flying. we trapped a wasp under a cup, and abi said careful when you let it out as it will probably make a beeline for us. i said surely she meant a waspline. we looked at the old faithful inn (the oldest lodge in america apparently), there was a little crow’s nest bit on the top floor that overlooked all the other floors, which is now closed due to an earthquake in 1959 in yellowstone which made the timbers unsafe. in the past though an orchestra used to play up there whilst people danced around on the balconies.

we heard the road was back opened and set off all excited to our next site. we had to drive through all the smoke and bert saw flames in the trees off to the left whilst i was filming the smoke over yellowstone lake on the right. it was a bit scary to be that close to a fire, but exciting too, and obviously safe enough otherwise the ranger wouldn’t have sent us through. the ranger told abi and andrew not to stop under any circumstances, even if they saw a bear on fire doing cartwheels across the road. he didn’t say anything to us, bert figured it was because we didn’t look like tourists so we didn’t need advice. maybe, maybe not.

that night’s site was a bit of a busy and not very pretty rv site, all the rvs rammed in next to each other as close as possible, so you can watch your neighbour’s tv or watch them doing their washing up. we got a full hook up though so could have the lights on to our heart’s content.

saturday 26th september: fishing bridge campground, to cooke city (montana/wyoming border)
up again at 6ish to go look at wildlife.

firstly i saw some otters swimming through a river, about 6 of them. then we stopped to look at some fairly close buffalo, walking along in a herd, hoovering the grass, and drinking down at the lake. after a while they had surrounded the car, and all other cars around us. one of them, the alpha buffalo, was growling lots and loudly, and hounding one of the girl buffalos as she tried to eat her breakfast. one of the other ones fell down a sandy bank towards the lake and rolled around for a while unable to get up properly, which was pretty funny. i think he was trying to cover up his fall and make it look like a planned roll around in the mud, but it definitely wasn’t.

i was freaking out to be that close to all these huge buffalos even though we were in the car, and not really at a big risk. i was worried one would put his head through the open window and try to eat us. bert told me to shut up as he was trying to video it all.



nobody else seemed scared, as usual. i scrambled over bert to the other side of the car when one of them came too close for comfort, then we watched and giggled as they headbutted the car behind us. we saw a few other lone buffalos and some more herds along the way, but no other species of wildlife. we really wanted to see a bear or a wolf, but these are harder to spot. it’s funny how the first time we saw that lone buffalo we were totally amazed and taking tons of photos, but after the whole herd then seeing some more, you just go oh look a buffalo on the road, let’s go round him. it becomes normality very quickly.

a grizzly bear, abi, and andrew

after another bacony pancakey breakfast we went on a 6 mile walk along yellowstone canyon to a place called point sublime. we stopped loads along the way to take photos and look at the view, which was stunning - a huge deep canyon with red, yellow, white stone sides, and some huge waterfalls along the way.


on arriving at sublime point, we decided it wasn’t that sublime compared to the other places we’d stopped en route, and that we would have named it anticlimax point instead. perhaps the people who named it were coming the other way, and comparatively to that maybe it was sublime. we also thought there should be another point called ridiculous point so you could go from the sublime to the ridiculous. we took some photos of gummy bears (see earlier blog), and tried to decide whether that funny noise we had heard was a bear or a tree blowing in the wind. me and abi though the latter, but bert and andrew said it was definitely a bear. the walk back took 1 hour 15 mins instead of the 3 hours it took on the way there as we had stopped to look at things so much.
a bird


a waterfall

a canyon

a tree (dead)

us at the end of the hike

after this we drove up dunraven pass to look for bears as we heard a ranger saying that’s where they are at the moment. there were lots of photographers out with big huge cameras and lenses, they’d been there pretty much all day waiting for a grizzly to appear that supposedly appears each day around 6pm. we looked for a bit but then gave up. me and bert left to carry on heading south at this point, and abi and andrew were going to go back up north towards calgary where they had come from last week. when we left them we did in fact see a black bear loping down the hillside, at quite a distance so no good for photos. was cool to see one at a safe distance after our previous close encounters. apparently the bears eat this one particular type of moth to fill up on calories for the winter hibernation period, because the moth is more calorific than the equivalent amount of elk meat or other meat would be for the bears. they tip up stones to find the moths and then gorge on them. weird that such big animals survive on things like moths and berries.

we planned to try to find a campsite in the north east of the park but the sites were all full, so we carried on out of the park and stopped in a town called cooke city for a beer and to see if they had advice re places to park. not really, but they gave us names of other sites. in the end we parked in a parking lot on the wyoming/montana border.

it’s great paying nothing for your night’s accommodation. we wondered where abi and andrew had managed to camp that night, but had no way of contacting them, they must have been ok and not eaten by bears as i have heard from mammamia that abi is back in england now.