Unfortunately, by the time we reached our first major stop this morning at Mammoth Hot Springs, it had started to pour down with rain so hard that the coach was crawling along at a snails pace with the driver staring myopically through the windscreen and attempting to wipe condensation from the inside of the glass with his sleeve while driving with only one hand. Quite why our brand new, state of the art coach didn't have heated windows is anybody's guess. Mammoth Hot Springs is a large area of Yellowstone National Park where a series of Travertine terraces have been formed over millions of years out of calcium deposited by water cooling after being ejected by the volcano below (Well, not technically below - this area of Yellowstone is actually just outside the crater boundary beneath the surface, but we were still close enough for its effects to show themselves quite dramatically, so lets not quibble). Luckily, there was a cafe and restaurant in the area of the springs which was, naturally, packed with people staring out forlornly at the weather - I found myself suffering from Deja Vu, remembering what it had been like in Australia back in 1995 when we arrived at Mataranka Hot Springs in the middle of a downpour. I also found myself suffering from Deja Vu, remembering what it had been like at Mataranka. The plan had been to take a leisurely walk along an adjoining pathway to the nearby Mammoth springs to watch them bubbling away, but clearly this wasn't an option while the entire contents of the ocean were being poured on our heads - not that the rain would've made them any less interesting or anything, but it was just considered too dangerous to walk along a narrow pathway with boiling hot pools of mud and water on either side when we couldn't see where we were going. Instead, we sat in the restaurant, had a meal, and listened to the guide telling us what we were missing. The funniest thing she told us all day was that the temperature of the water at Mammoth was actually considered to be quite cold, due to the fact that it has had a good chance to cool while being driven through underground fault lines on it's way to the springs - by the time it gets here and emerges from the ground, she told us, it is only around 180 degrees. Somehow, I still don't think I'll be going back for a swim anytime soon - call me in a couple of million years and I may reconsider. After eating, we all dashed across the road to the gift shop for a general rummage about. The shop was full of souvenirs displaying messages telling people that we had been to Mammoth and seen the hot springs, but there was a strange lack of anything saying that the day had been a total washout and we had been unable to see a thing.

The coach was due to leave just as the sun started to re-appear, and I think a number of passengers must have threatened the driver with physical violence if he left without allowing us to see the springs, so he kindly offered to drive us a few hundred yards and drop us by the side of the road in an illegal parking spot where we could just dart across a small patch of grass and reach the hot springs more easily. As it happened, the view we had of the springs from our exclusive vantage point probably looked better than the one everybody else got to see anyway - the sun was just peeking out from behind the clouds and casting its light on the rocks, and the whole area around the Travertine terraces was glinting in the sun. With everybody else still stuck back at the visitors centre cursing the weather, we were the only people to get to see the springs in this light. Hot water was spouting from the top of a huge hill of rocks and cascading down what looked very much like a natural rock garden, the water sparkling in the sunlight as it formed tiny waterfalls between the rocks. I wanted to reach out and put my hand in the water, or perhaps take off my shoes and go for a paddle, but was fully aware that to do so would've ensured that I only had a steaming stump left at the end of my leg afterwards. The water was, after all, being heated by the volcano beneath our feet. Well, okay then if you're going to be picky - the volcano off to the left a bit.

Back on the coach, our next stop was by the shores of beautiful Yellowstone Lake, where photos were taken by the shed load. The waters were an unbelievable turquoise, and the lake was bordered by the snowy mountains and endless beauty that helps to make this place worthy of National Park status. You must, however, always keep at the back of your mind that the whole region is right on top of an active volcano which is in the habit of erupting and covering the Earth in volcanic ash every six hundred thousand years or so and which just happens to have last erupted around six hundred thousand years ago - so it's never such a good idea to just go "Oh look, a nice lake. Who's for a dip?". Recently, two small children on holiday with their parents in the park decided to go swimming in Yellowstone Lake. They splashed around for half an hour, generally had a great time, and then went to get out - but as they did so, they stepped onto a soft crust and disappeared into the volcanic depths of the earth never to be seen again.

While I was taking my photos, pondering these thoughts and being very careful where I stood in case the car park should suddenly crumble beneath me and I found myself drifting off into the sunset on a lake a lava, one of the woman on the coach approached me and asked if I was a professional photographer. Her son, it seemed, had just finished a college course on photography and I was doing all the same things that she had seen him do, so I really must be quite talented - her words, not mine. A few moments later, while I was glowing with pride and thinking what a good judge of character the Americans really were, somebody else came up and asked me what part of Australia I came from.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.