Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

I'm staying in Estes Park, another fairly upmarket resort town. The local brewery has some good beers, notably the seasonal Wet Hop IPA, although the pub itself is somewhat unlovely. My motel is very nice, and free from nocturnal marauders of the ursine variety.

Unfortunately the weather here has been really minging, and so the photos below don't do the park justice at all. I will definitely come back here one day and make amends.

However it won't be any time soon. I can exclusively reveal that this is the last park I'm visiting on this trip. We are about to enter Part Two of my travels, and there will be no more driving around the countryside: the hire car has been handed back, after 4,000 miles over three weeks and through nine national parks across four states. Every single night I've offered up a prayer of thanks to whoever invented cruise control.

And tonight there's an extra special vote of thanks to the Budget Car Rental employee who inspected my returned vehicle and completely failed to notice the rock chip in the windscreen, the slight dent above the front passenger-side wheel, and the fact that the rear passenger-side wheel was massively out of alignment thanks to a rather brutal encounter with a pothole at a gas station in Idaho.

I'll miss having the car. Some of the satellite radio stations have a good selection of tunes which, once you've heard them while bowling along an empty highway in the desert, with the sun setting behind the mountains, you realise they were meant to be heard that way all along. For example, the Eagles and 'Joshua Tree'-era U2 and early Fleetwod Mac. Even that new Coldplay one sounds a bit less wussy than usual, out in the desert.

Anyway, as of the next blog, things will take a very different turn. Stay tuned to find out more.

A rainbow...

Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park

Story of my day - the sun shining, somewhere else.

As above...

Edd vs Fast Food #2
Taco Bell
Fast becoming a favourite of mine. I know the photo doesn't look enormously appetising.
Not ideal for a sit-down meal, but a chicken Burrito Supreme is a great snack between meals.

Glenwood Springs, Colorado

Glenwood Springs is a fairly upmarket spa resort where the hot springs pool, at 405 feet by 100 feet, is the world's largest. It's hard to imagine a more pointless world record than that. Even a regular size swimming pool has more than enough germs and toenail clippings and used plasters and God knows what else. Of course, I have no interest in swimming pools right now, because I'm already sporting my traditional polychromatic travel tan: brown arms, red neck, blotchy face, and everything else milky white. (Apart from the hair, which is still ginger). By keeping my T-shirt on I can just about pass for human.

It was always inevitable that there would be a bit of an anti-climax in whatever followed Utah's matchless collection of national parks. The wet and cloudy weather hasn't helped. Having said that, I've had a couple of nice short hikes here, and more importantly the Glenwood Canyon brewery serves admirable beers in its excellent brewpub - my favourite being the Rio Grande, very hoppy but with character to match. And also another very nice raspberry wheat...I'm going to make a tentative prediction that we'll soon be seeing raspberry wheat beer appear en masse in the UK, and that it will greatly simplify the process of getting one's round in, because both boys and girls will all drink it.

A little bit of excitement on Sunday morning at the motel - overnight, an adult female bear and her two cubs had crept into the car park, knocking over bins and raking through the contents. (This is a traditional-style motel where all the rooms open right onto the car park). The next morning, over breakfast bagels, the motel owner was excitedly telling everyone how he'd heard the bin fall over and had been peering out of the door with his shotgun loaded. It all sounded a bit improbable until I went out into the car park and, sure enough, there were several bucket-sized piles of bear droppings. That must have been one big-assed bear. The presence of the cubs was especially bad news: ordinarily, bears have absolutely no interest in humans, but if you get inbetween Mommy Bear and Baby Bear then all your earthly troubles will very soon be at an end...

Fortunately I completely missed the Bear Episode because I was asleep in my room, with the door locked, comatose after all those Glenwood Canyon beers. Guys, you saved my life.

Looking south across Colorado from Red Mountain

Grizzly Creek

That's the Interstate 70 freeway rolling along near the bottom of the picture.
Motorway journeys in England would be more tolerable if they looked like this.

Halfway up the canyon towards Hanging Lake (see below)

Hanging Lake.
As you can see, the water is miraculously clear. This is because of, er, science.

Hanging Lake

Real Salt Lake 5 Colorado Rapids 1 (FT)

That's 'Real' as in the Spanish 'Réal Madrid', not as in the English 'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)'.

This game was a bit one-sided, as the scoreline suggests. Colorado did in fact score first, but Real then scored three in five minutes to turn it round and it was 4-1 before half time. A fifth was added in the second half and it could easily have been more. I felt sorry for the Colorado keeper, who frankly had a total mare: two of the Real goals came straight from his unforced fumbles, and he also conceded an own goal, albeit a deflection.

It was interesting to note how the matchday experience differs from what I'm used to. First there's the good stuff: you can drink beer in your seat, and while $9 for a big serving of draft Shock Top Belgian White isn't cheap, it's still pretty good value compared with what you pay for a small lukewarm plastic bottle of Fosters back in Sunderland.

There are also some things I could really do without, like the rather unsporting 'yellow cards' given out to the crowd for them to wave at the ref when they don't approve of a challenge. These cards are of course sponsored. Also the absence of spontaneous singing...it was pretty tame apart from one end of the stadium, which was filled with - how can I put this tactfully? - Mexicans, who banged the same drums and sang the same songs all through the game. I heard one ad hoc chorus of 'If You Hate Colorado, Clap Your Hands', but it wasn't convincing.

Then there's some things that are just plain weird: the National Anthem before the game; the visiting team being referred to as the 'guest' team; the way the home crowd responded to conceding the opening goal with loud gasps of dismay, rather than just muttering obscenities under its breath like we do back in Blighty.

Perhaps the weirdest bit was going into the gents pre-match to find a chap changing his baby daughter's nappy on a proper baby change table. If I live to be a hundred years old, that's one thing I'll never see in the male pit lane at the Stadium of Light.

Anyway, that's enough about football. I've decided to extend the Edd vs Food photographic saga: it will continue to reflect the most notable and photogenic meals I enjoy on my travels, but from now on there will also be a separate series called Edd vs Fast Food. I've decided to evaluate, for the benefit of my reading public, all of the main American fast food chains which most of you won't have sampled (ie those other than McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and KFC). I made a start with Wendy's and Jack In The Box in my New York City blog last year: my summary of the rest begins below.

The Rio Tinto Stadium (capacity 20,507). Already 5-1 at this point.

Mountains in the distance behind the north-east corner.

The stadium filling up as the sun goes down.

Edd vs Food #17
Cheese enchilada, a Taco a la Iguana, a beef flauta topped with guacamole and sour cream,
a chile relleno, a beef tostada and a side of refried beans.
At the Red Iguana restaurant on North Temple Street.
It's #1 in SLC on TripAdvisor...lunch queues forming outside at 11.30 on a Friday morning...deservedly so.

Edd vs Fast Food #1
Denny's
An inauspicious start to the series: mediocre food, surly service, and not at all cheap.
The 'hash brown' was just a big pile of shredded potato, in widely varying degrees of fried-ness.
One of those places you visit only when nothing else is available.

Salt Lake City, Utah

Back in Utah! And I'm very happy about it. Previously, in my blind prejudice, I had always assumed that Utah was just one big desert, with occasional pink rocks sticking up out of the sand, where Mormon men herded bigamous wives by the dozen into alcohol-free compounds. But in fact Utah is lively and friendly and fun, and full of marvellous scenery. (A lot of famous movies were filmed here).

Salt Lake City itself, a few hundred miles south from Jackson Hole, back down Interstate 15 (via a detour to Idaho Falls, for which see photos below) is much as you'd expect: hot, flat, dry and spacious. The whole of the city, including suburbs, is laid out on a Manhattan-style grid system which makes it very easy to navigate around.

I visited the Salt Lake Temple, aka the Mormon Mecca, but frankly it was a bit of an anti-climax: it's nowhere near as big as you might expect, and architecturally it's a fairly bland mix of derivative styles. Also it suffers from being completely enclosed by larger modern high-rises, mostly owned by banks. God is big here, but Mammon is bigger.

As for the Mormon faith itself, well, I'm always open to all arguments of the metaphysical, moral and spiritual varieties; but ask me to give up both alcohol and caffeine, and just watch me turn into Richard Dawkins...

Back on the road tomorrow. Sporting action tonight first though! See next blog for details.

Downtown SLC at sunset, from the foothills to the east

City Hall

Sugar House Park

Utah State Capitol

Looking down (a very long way down) State Street from the Capitol building

Saying goodbye to Wyoming, on Highway 26

Idaho Falls

Edd vs Food #16
Henry's Fork sandwich
(Caribbean jerk spiced chicken, sauteed onion, roasted red pepper, grilled pineapple and melted swiss cheese)
with mixed greens, crumbled cheese and cranberry salsa.
At the Snakebite Restaurant, Idaho Falls

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

As you drive north into Yellowstone, with its glimmering lakes and sweeping vistas, the first thought that strikes you is - who's farted? It turns out that geysers spew out more than just water. They also produce sulphur, which is perfectly safe, but somewhat whiffy.

I must admit that I was slightly underwhelmed by Yellowstone on the whole. Partly because it was a cloudy day, which is never great for visibility or photography, and partly because I'd probably built it up too much beforehand. It's a very famous National Park and I had imagined that it might go straight in at number one onto the list of my favourites, but in fact I don't think it's made it into the top five. That's not to say that it isn't a wondrous place full of fascinating scenery and wildlife - it is. But I'd probably go back to all of Yosemite, Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands and Black Canyon before I came back here.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park

;

Today: king of the road.
Tomorrow: a burger. Several hundred burgers, in fact.

...and yet another animal completely unfazed by humans and their machines. This time, an elk.

Edd vs Food #14
Chicken wrap with ranch dressing at the Lake restaurant, Canyon Village, Yellowstone National Park.
It was perfect, apart from the gherkin. Nobody likes gherkins.

Edd vs Food #15
Roast leg of Colorado lamb, with chickpea casserole, fennel marmalade and romesco sauce.
At the Spur restaurant and bar, part of the Teton Mountain Lodge hotel (v  posh).
Apologies for the excessive flash in the photo - it makes the lamb look greasy, which it certainly wasn't. 

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Leaving my motel in southwest Utah and heading north - a very long way north, two days' drive - through the plains of Idaho into the mountains of Wyoming, it was nice to see the rocks turning from pink to white, and to feel the breeze blowing a little cooler. Utah is great, but it's very hot, and indeed the main reason I did the Zion hike so quickly was that I just couldn't wait to get back under the aircon. Here in Jackson Hole, I'm wearing jeans rather than shorts in the evening, and when I got to the top of Table Mountain (see pics) the breeze was distinctly chilly. Bliss.

The Table Mountain hike is listed by the National Park Service as nine hours. Pah, again. I was up and down in less than six. Disappointingly, I didn't see any bears.

Beers, unlike bears, are in plentiful supply. In this area we have the Snake River, Roadhouse and Grand Teton breweries, all worthy of note. The standout for me has been Snake River's Hoback Hefeweizen, a really lovely unfiltered wheat beer with a hint of banana.

Grand Teton (13,776ft), seen facing east from Table Mountain (11,106ft)

Facing north from Table Mountain

Facing west, back down the trail, which you can see running down the middle of the ridge.
It then drops into the forest to the right.

Looking back up the trail from halfway down.
Table Mountain is the peak at the top of the ridge - the nipple-shaped one.
I'm not being funny. Grand Teton park is named for 'teton', the French word for 'teat'.

A mellow piece of Wyoming, near the bottom of the trail.

Edd vs Food #13
My first-ever bison burger, at the Mangy Moose bar in Jackson Hole.
Bison is quite nice, but not as nice as llama - see La Paz, Bolivia in February 2012 below (on the website)

At Jackson Lake - this looks like a better option than the hire car.

Zion National Park, Utah

As previously...

Heading up the East Rim Trail

Zion Canyon, seen from Observation Point.
This hike is 4 miles each way with a 2,148ft climb & descend. The park guide quotes 6 hours.
I was up and down in 3 hours flat, including 15 minutes chill time at the top. Just sayin'.

Looking back at the East Rim Trail from Observation Point.
The zig-zag in the rock in the middle of the picture - that's the path. There's no guardrail.
It's perfectly safe as long as you stay close to the rock and don't look over the edge.

This reminded me of that film '127 Hours' (filmed in Utah but not here),
where the chap gets trapped between rocks and has to chop his own arm off to escape.
It's a good job that didn't happen to me. The sharpest thing I had on me was my car keys.
I'd have been there all week.

Coming back down the East Rim trail, looking over Big Bend, heading back to Weeping Rock.

Kolob Canyon

Kolob Canyon again

The animals in Zion are pretty tame. This squirrel was plainly posing.

...as was this lizard.

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

On this trip, I find I'm ending up with a larger number of interesting photos than previously. So there will be a few blog entries which dispense with the usual waffle and instead consist mostly of visual delights. Starting with this one, from Bryce Canyon.

Bryce Canyon amphitheatre

from Paria View

from Paria View again

from Sunrise Point

from Yovimpa Point

from Farview Point

A chipmunk at the Black Dragon Canyon scenic overlook, on Interstate 70 westbound.
I have named him Timmy.