After 5 days of hanging out in Guelph with a friend, Silver, who i met in Adelaide, and getting a couple of things fixed on the car, I was definitely ready to hit the road again. I picked up Julia on saturday (30th oct) night from her several day train ride across the country. Sunday we visited Niagara Falls. It really is huge!! and also a massive tourist trap. Driving along the main parkway along side the falls, we passed parking for $20, then cheaper, and then it was free. We parked for free and meandered along for 10 minutes looking at the massive amounts of water and wondering how many of the many tourists pay the $20 just for the convenience of being able to simply cross the road and be right at the best view point over the falls.
Part 3 of the car stories...
A loose connection was found to the fan, which has stopped the overheating and hopefully some stuff to swell the seals in the engine will stop the oil leak.
But then, just as I was feeling confident that all was well with the car, I was driving to Guelph, it had been raining for a little while, I was a few km's from Silvers place, and the windscreen wipers suddenly stop working. Of all the things to go wrong with the car, I didn't think it would be the wipers! Fortunately, it wasn't raining too heavily, so slowly on I go. Arriving safely, Silver helped me get them fixed (she has a good relationship with her mechanic, due to her own car troubles), before I went anywhere else!
Sunday night we spent at Marlies's brother's place. It was Halloween, a ridiculous commercialised excuse for kids to eat much sugar and for most other people to drink to much, but as trick-or-treaters came to the door, we convince Marlies's brother, Corni, to answer the door in Afrikaans....to some very confused and hilarious reactions! Monday morning started the 16 hr drive to Josh's place in Minnesota. We drove though Michigan, Wisconsin and into Minnesota- bringing my number of states us to 10- 1/5 of the continental states, not that I'm counting or anything....
We spent from Tuesday afternoon to Friday (5th nov) morning staying with Josh, it was great to see him again and where he grew up as he took us down memory lane to all his childhood spots. We also got creative and carved pumpkins (North Americans don't eat their pumpkins, they carve them for halloween, except at Thanksgiving.....)
Reluctant to leave a good friend, but keen to get going, we continued on for the next marathon leg of the journey, 14 hours to Bozeman Montana. Across North Dakota- where the slogan is "Legendary". Apparently Legendary is flat straight and boring, but then again, I may be a bit spoilt, having lived in the mountains for the last 6 months. We did however, have breakfast with a couple of Bison on Tuesday morning on the edge of Theodore Roosevelt National Park which was pretty awesome.
Saturday evening we arrived in Bozeman and stayed at the backpackers (for our first night of paid for accommodation) which is where Kirsten, a friend of mine from uni is working! It was great to catch up with her, and see a familiar face from home!
We headed out again sunday morning for Yellowstone National Park. Sadly, they close all but the northern road on monday morning, so we decided to check out the Geysers on sunday afternoon. The highlight was Old Faithful, which sprays water many meters into the air. We also saw 3 Coyotes, lots of Bison and elk. Daylight saving has ended, so now the sun sets at about 5, which meant we had a early dinner before it got too dark, and having no effective light source while camping, we were in bed by about 7 (feeling a bit like a little kid, but meaning we got lots of sleep!) We awoke on Monday surrounded by Elk, which we were told were using us as a human shield against predators (eeekkk...) but they're herbivores and fairly sedate, so as long as we leave them along, their not really dangerous. Monday dawned cold and rainy, but we hiked to Hellroaring creek through the Yellowstone valley. Mid afternoon it started to snow and continued into the evening.
Tuesday we headed south through Montana, Idaho, where we say some snow on the roads (my first experience of driving on snowy roads- but thankfully no ice) and we stayed the night in Salt Lake City, ready to hit the deserts of Utah where we were hoping it was going to be warmer.
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