We've finally arrived at at what we'd always planned to be our final USA destination, Yellowstone! In keeping with the vast pressure building up underneath the park, which will eventually lead to some kind of super explosion, tension has been building in our camp as to what to do next... Luckily the eruption of this topic has been more manageable than the potentially mankind ending one that Yellowstone will provide us with in the near geological future though. But even still, it has been a significant discussion. We've also been losing various members of the team at times, left to fend for themselves against the grizzlies, as well as meeting some even more adventurous travellers than ourselves. All in a week's cycle.

You may remember from last week that Addie had not returned from the back country the previous night, so concern surrounding her whereabouts lead to a tense morning, the other guys sent notes up the trail to her through passing hikers and eventually, after we'd done a short hike around Taggart Lake, she materialised out of the crowd. Understandably tired having spent the night fairly alone and facing her worst fears, all good character building! We were certainly happy to see her safe and sound, if a little hungry, dehydrated and tired. Today the team also gained some new members, with Austin's cousins Ryan and Justin joining the crew for a week or so from Texas!

We said goodbye to the Tetons by spending a day doing sweet F.A. and making the most of campsite facilities to order some replacement equipment, after having recently been liberally shedding our possessions down toilets and in leaf litter on the forest floor. "The Cousins", Ryan and Justin, made their way into everyone's good books by cooking up a storm for breakfast, thanks guys! Their cooking being something we'd become accustomed to over the next few days. Then, just before we were to take off north towards Yellowstone, we started talking to someone who had spent the last 3 years traversing the globe on a motorcycle, from the lovely city of Tallinn, Estonia, our new friend Pärle (for those who have a grasp of Estonian your can find out more here!). Contemplating the sad possibility of the end of her trip due to virus border closures, which had been extended earlier that day, we had a fair amount in common and ideas to share, so it was lovely to chat and put off leaving on the bikes for just a little while longer. We agreed to meet for camping later, although it was not to be as we lost both Pärle and Jacob that night. Nicely in keeping with our recent form...

The day had arrived, we were to enter Yellowstone after a year of planning and over 4 months of cycling! And in the morning we managed to reconvene with the whole crew, as well as meeting Addie's family (now 4/5 families met from our new friends! And it has been pleasure each and every time). We'd been forewarned about the dodgy road situation in Yellowstone, the perfect storm of no hard shoulder and old fogies in RVs, hiding behind dashboards twice their height while trying to look out for wildlife... So you can probably imagine that the biggest dangers present had little to do with the bison, grizzlies and wolves that inhabit the area and more to do with morons directing large lumps of steel at breakneck speeds. In any case we chugged along and made it into the "caldera" of the supervolcano and a little campsite, ready to explore the park the next day. In the evening we met up with Pärle who, amongst many other things, put Ruth's mind to rest regarding the dangers of Mexico, which until had been built up as a death sentence by everyone we had met. This was to lead to the previously hinted at explosion of tension between the two of us as to what to do next, with Ruth now adamant on flying over the border and myself desperate to avoid flying during the trip... If you want to hear the resolution to this you'll have to wait with bated breath as negotiations are ongoing!

Time to put our tourist hat on, but to delay the moment as much as possible we got up very early to get a head start on the swarms of RV owners that would soon start crawling over the entire park. We rolled over to the West Thumb geyser basin to watch the sun rise over Yellowstone Lake through the toxic mist rising steadily off the psychedelic hot springs that scattered the area, an extension to the lake caused by an explosion that happened more years ago than I can care to imagine. Amongst the beauty found while gazing open eyed into these wounds on the earth's crust, the dangerous are made vividly clear. Facts about the number of visitors that took their final adventure off the trail before ending up falling through the thin crust covering acidic pools of super heated water and dissolving into the depths of the earth, never to be seen again... We stuck rigidly to the paths and only saw the odd bison walking through such danger (who also every now and again meet their end in such gruesome ways!). The place was mesmerizing and we built up to the main attractions by waiting around for a few hours until the Lone Star Geyser, off on its lonesome down a bike path, blow one off. We waited patiently with some less patient, but good fun fellas from Idaho, some brothers and brothers-in-laws who were off on a big hike, who stuck around for the "mini" eruption but foolishly missed the main attraction which put the "awe" in awesome (sorry guys! Check out the log book in the photo ;)). Then we headed down the road to the largest geyser basin in the world and meandered amongst the sunburst pools who's image will resonate in our memories for a lifetime. Each had its own character, it must have been fun to name them originally, and some surprised us with their watery displays while others promised so much, yet were rather predictably, unpredictable. After dragging Ruth around enough hot springs to make her never wish to see another in her life, we moved onto yet more geyser basins! Before hitting the big one, Grand Prismatic Spring, which was insane. The largest hot spring in the world. Blow me away. But it was pushing Ruth over the edge of sanity so we set off for the campground down a cycle path to be met by a huge herd of bison! And it was here that we saw confirmation that they fall into the boiling waters as we spied some bones at the bottom of one of the pools (unless these were the remains of some of the crazy tourists that is!). All too much for one day and so we met up with the team to trade the day's stories and plan for what was to come at the campground as the sun was going down.

The plan agreed upon the previous evening would take us initially out of the park with the weekend's crowds threatening and trading the bikes for The Cousins' pickup truck, which even if the size of a bull elephant on steroids was still not quite large enough for the 8 of us. So we'd be spending some time in the bed (apparently legal, at least in Texas...). Before climbing aboard we cycled the remaining kilometres out of the park to West Yellowstone and into our 6^th state, big sky country Montana! Having exited the food desert of the parks we indulged in cheap supermarket fare as passers by stared with disgust at the bunch of tramps eating food off the pavement. We also met up with Pärle to say our temporary goodbyes but hoped to meet later down the road. So we boarded the pickup and all went to see the rest of the park with the assistance of an engine (weirdly a very tiring experience!) before camping in the woods near to town and rocking a tea party.

Yellowstone had really taken it out of us, so although most of the team were going to visit the town for the day we hung back and visited the 10m² area of forest in the vicinity of the tent. Here we 'passionately' discussed what to do next, now that what had always been planned to be our final destination in America was behind us. Leaving us a little lost and confused. We tried to make a short term plan that would keep us both happy, which was a challenge. I also tried my geeky hand at setting up a cloud server for us to store our photos and audiologs now that the free OneDrive and Google solutions we were using had filled up. The cycle was easy (seeing a road making train along the way was cool though) and we met up with Jacob to stealth camp in the peripheries of the national park; playing dominoes and dodge the mosquitos till the evening came and the others caught up.

Today we'd visit the town of Big Sky, a ski resort than Addie had had a serious accident at a couple of winters ago, leaving her with a enormous cross (and for a while, unfortunately, swastika) shaped scare on her leg , and was keen to revisit the scene of the crime. The town was nice and we hiked to a lovely waterfall, where the team rigged up a "water line", which is a slackline/tightrope over some body of water, over the river and entertained the masses; and dear lord were there masses as the place was heaving! Ruth and I left a little earlier and headed down what was rumoured to be the most dangerous road in America (and would later turn out to be the 5^th most dangerous road in... Montana) to spend the evening once again with Jacob and cooked up and lentil curry. The rest of the team were hiking to the accident location and arrived later to tell us all about it and cook up some tasty burgers.