Jimmy Buffett Fall Tour

Our latest adventure started on Oct. 1, a day earlier than planned, in order to start our journey south one day ahead of the cold front heading into Alberta. Since then we have been staying one day ahead of overnight freezing temperatures, closely monitoring the weather so that we don't encounter any problems with our water lines in the camper van. Late this afternoon we arrived in Vernal,, Utah, located in the NE corner of the state and we now appear to be home free with night time low temperatures remaining above 0C.

The daytime high's have all been 20C+ so we have been stopping along the way. Yesterday we spent most of the day in Yellowstone National Park. We wished we could have stayed a few days longer. The park is massive with over 1,000 miles of hiking trails but we only had enough time to explore the park highlights and enjoy a few short walks to active geysers (Old Faithful didn't disappoint). The park sits on top of the largest active volcano on the continent at 8,000 feet above sea level (scuttling our camping plans), resulting in plenty of hot springs, geysers, mud pots and fumaroles to see with little effort. If anyone gets back to Yellowstone NP before we do, keep an eye out for my Maui Jim sunglasses (black) which are somewhere in the 9,000 square kilometre park.

There wasn't enough time left in the day to explore Grand Teton NP so we had to settle for admiring the mountain views as we drove through the park on our way to Jackson, Wyoming where we had dinner at The Bird, a fun spot that was very lively for a Tuesday night. Today we drove through Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area which was disappointing other than the lovely roadside views at the south end of the park.

Our drive throughout Wyoming, other than the NP's, featured very dry ranchland (drought-stricken). Fortunately, our IPod was pre-loaded with plenty of Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcasts to entertain us along the way. Our daughter, Caity, put us on to SGU several years ago and the podcasts (free download) have become a favourite travelling companion on our trips (use Google to find their website if you have an interest in Science and the pro's & con's of new scientific discoveries).
I also used my Nashville Music Box to convert our Jimmy Buffett records on to CD's and then transferred them to the IPod so that we can have a daily dose of Jimmy leading up to his Las Vegas concert at the end of the month where we will be joined by 6 Parrot Head friends from Calgary who are flying down to help Rhonda knock off another item from her 2008 Bucket List party choices.
Stay tuned for Jimmy Buffett lead-ins.

Emerald Springs

Back Basin Bowl

Palette Springs

Flaming Gorge NRA