Oops - forgot to mention - Jackson Hole!

After leaving Yellowstone, we stopped at a little ski town by the name of Jackson Hole for lunch. It was a beautiful day, so we decided we would have a little walk around the main square, before buying lunch.
We had been told about what we would find - but it still was amazing to see -

At each corner of the park, are these arches made of the antlers shed by the antelope.
Now they sell the antlers to tourists to help raise money to buy food for the antelope, so that they won't starve and die out.

Salt Lake City

To get from West Yellowstone to Salt Lake City, we had to travel back through part of Yellowstone NP. So we travelled from Montana, into Wyoming, then into Idaho and then to Utah!
Upon arriving at Salt Lake City, we were given a small city tour. As an optional extra, we had the chance to tour the Beehive House - where the original leader of the Mormon's lived. We then went next door to the John Smith Building where on the 10th floor is a fabulous buffet restaurant with great views of the temple.

The Temple from the Restaurant window - what we saw whilst eating dinner!

Yellowstone National Park

Right next door (really!)to the town of West Yellowstone is the state Wyoming. As you leave the town, you cross into the state as well as enter the Yellowstone NP.
What can I say! - Yellowstone is an amazing place -
we saw lots of the wildlife, from bison to bears -

a close encounter with a bison

and we saw some great landscapes, from hot pools, to geysers to its own grand canyon with waterfall -

one of the many hot pools

Old Faithfull

Yellowstone's "Grand Canyon"



Craters of the Moon

Today we headed to an incredible place - the Craters of the Moon National Park. In the middle of nowhere, this amazing landscape appears - it was a volcanically active area as little as 2,000 years ago. Here some of the astronauts did their geology training for their time on the moon.

After having travelled from California into Nevada (Reno) and Idaho (Twin Falls), we now cross into Montana. We stayed for 2 nights at a place called West Yellowstone - a charming little town (but freezing in the mornings that we were there - we got up the first morning to go for a walk and it was only 2 degrees C! - what were we thinking!!!!)

On the Road!

We headed out early today - going to Reno.
We stopped at Sacremento for morning tea, went on to Lake Tahoe for a picnic lunch - fabulous setting

Lake Tahoe

We then crossed the border and went on to Virginia City (of Western movie fame)

and finished our day at the Nugget Casino in Reno. Of course we had to have a "little gamble" after tea and a nice win on the pokies.

The next day was a long day, stopping at Winnemucca and Elko before reaching Twin Falls for the night.

Here is quite a fabulous canyon, with a span bridge crossing it, from which there are many free fallers jumping from it.

A little further down from here is where Evil Kneivel did a jump.

!st Day of Tour - a City Tour!

Because of  one of the areas that we were going to visit today was closed for a festival, our tour guide decided that as a bonus, we would go to the Golden Gate Bridge for a close up look - and we were also fortunate again - the weather cleared so that we could get good views of the bridge.

Me, actually on the bridge! (Looking a bit worried)

The afternoon was free time, so we walked up to the top of Lombard Street and did the walk down the pedestrian side of the street.





Wine Country

Our wine tour took us out of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge to an area that looks very much like McLaren Vale - the golden rolling hills and gum trees everywhere. We visited 3 wineries - Jacuzzi (- yes, they are the family that invented the jacuzzi), Clines (which make a very nice Zinfandel), and Madonna (whose tasting sample was such, that if you inhaled the smell of the wine too much, the sample was gone!).

The lovely buildings at Jacuzzi Winery

The following day we did another walk through Chinatown before checking out of the hotel and shifting to the hotel at Fisherman's Wharf, ready for the start of the tour.

The day cleared so we sat out on one of the piers and watched the world go by!