Country festival, National Park and Rodeo

Red Ants Pants Festival

After our nature & horse riding experience, we thought it would be time to get to know the festival scene in the West. That is why we had already booked tickets for the Red Ants Pants Festival in White Sulphur Springs.

Red Ants Pants is actually a clothing line that is specialised in workwear for women (they do men clothing as well now). With the festival they organise each year they raise money for the Red Ants Pants foundation. Their mission: "To develop and expand leadership roles for women. To preserve and support working family farms and ranches.To enrich and promote rural communities."

We spent 2 nights at the festival ground. The festival takes place in a sleepy little town and you can see that they are not used to having so many people there. Having lunch in that one restaurant there can take you up to 2 hours LOL.

Arriving at the campground was already something. It felt like arriving somewhere in a dessert. Dust, campers, dust, more campers and a small main stage in the background. That was it. We expected something bigger like Hurricane in Germany with 6 stages (we did not expect carriages). Well, this was different.

We got to know Clayton, our camping neighbor from Texas who was very funny to talk to, and Misty and Kyle (our festival buddies for the weekend :)).

The first night at the festival was mwah. No-one was dancing, everyone sat down on their chairs and we did not really feel the festival atmosphere. We loved the sunset though.

That would change on the 2nd day.

We loved the second day! We danced in Cowboy style, sang Cowboy songs and walked around like Country Cowboy festival people. Yiiiihaaaaaaa!

The after party was a bit weird, as people ran around naked while playing Jenga. Weird.

When we woke up the next morning, some guys we met the night before, left us some camping gear they did not need anymore. We have a tarpen now!! Thanks guys.

Yellowstone National Park

Having learned our lesson from Glacier, we did book a campsite in the National Park in advance. We are getting better in planning ahead. The way to the campsite (through the park) was already very cool. Beautiful nature, volcanic activities everywhere and bisons, loads of bisons.

But, and we did not expect that, we were stuck in traffic jams! Bisons were blocking roads and even more irritating tourists were blocking the road watching bisons blocking the road (or grazing somewhere in the distance).

After we had finally arrived at our campsite Bridge Bay we got to know our camping neighbours Esther and Alicia from....and how big are the odds that that happens...Rotterdam (Crooswijk)! We spent the coming nights sitting by the campfire with those cool girls.

Our first night at the camping was freezing cold but luckily that was only the first night.

On the first day in the park we took Amy for a ride. We sort of went to Old Faithful (there is a big geyser) but as they were soooooo many tourists it was impossible to get a parking spot, so we kept driving. Instead of watching the geyser going off, we took a small hike at the Biscuit Basin trying to find the Mystical Falls. Hiking through the geothermal activities and the sulphur smell reminded us a lot of NZ. We hiked up a mountain but turned around quite fast as we did not take our bearspray with us. Luckily we did not meet a bear, unluckily we did not see the Mystical Falls.

After our hike we visited

• the Gibbon Falls,

• the Artistic Painpots,

• and we saw more bisons (seeing bisons is like seeing the elephants in Kenia. First, you are so impressed and happy to see them but after seeing hundreds of them, you want to see something different that just another bison).

In order to prepare our next day hike better and to see other wildlife than bisons, we went to the visitor center to get more information about where and when to go to see bears, elks, moose and maybe even wolves.

Our alarm clock went of at 6 am on the second day in order to see the Canyon Falls without tourists (& we needed to arrange another night at the camping which did not work out in first place but Alicia and Esther offered us to share their campspot - problem solved. Thanks girls).

Driving through the park in the morning fog and seeing the Canyon and its waterfalls in the morning sun was really impressive (especially at the viewing point 500 m down the trial).

We had breakfast afterwards on Mount Washburn,

• did a 2 hours hike to Slough Creek (Rick tried to find the loop trial which he did not find),

• had lunch at the Roosevelt Lodge and visited the Tower Falls.

• The highlight on our way back; WE SAW A BEAR!

Unfortunately we could not take a picture as we are not as asocial as all the other tourists stopping in the middle of the road, getting out of the car and getting as close to the bear as possible (they are creating traffic jams, they are disturbing the wildlife & it is dangerous). Stupid morons!...yes, we were getting a bit irritated by the above all Chinese tourists).

Our last evening in Yellowstone we spent by the lake and had another long night by the campfire (which got disturbed by an elk running into some tents which caused some kind of panic and loads of sirens). Thank you Alicia and Esther for the 3 nights by the fire and good luck following your dreams in France or Spain.

Summery of Yellowstone:

The nature is great and the wildlife you can see is very special. We saw: bisons (bye sons...), chipmunks, pikas, pronkhorns, bighorn sheep and a bear. Unfortunately, Yellowstone National Park is like a nature Disneyland. They are many tourists, traffic jams and even queueing (standing in the line) to see the highlights like in the Efteling.

Grand Tetons & Jackson

Driving through the Grand Teton National Park on our way further down direction Utah was spectacular. The Tetons were just stunning.

As we could not find a camping in Jacksons, we spent the night in Alpine where we enjoyed our first showers in days (stinky winky haha).

Garden City

We stayed in that little town as we were heading direction Heber City where we found a Rodeo we wanted to go to. Heading direction Garden City we drove through Geneva, Montpellier and even Paris LOL. Staying there was a bit odd, they were having a rasberry parade where candy is thrown, there a no bars, they do not sell wine (you have to go a state liquor store) and the camping was filled with annoying big kids (KOA camping = Kids of America rather than Kamping of America). We forgot that Utah is a Mormon state with very strict rules...

Rodeo in Heber City

We loved the camping in Heber City next to a dam. And in Heber City we treatedAmy to a car spa, arranged 'tent poles', made a cool shadow video and went to the rodeo.

Watching the rodeo was special. The whole ceremony before the rodeo included honoring every military group in the state & all important people of the city, listening to the honoring of the flag, the cowboy prayers, the declaration of the belief in the flag and the national hymn. The rodeo itself was cool and funny to see (we loved the wild cow milking).

We will continue our roadtrip today to Antelope Island. After that we will drive further down direction Las Vegas and New Mexico.