29th September - We didn't make it as far as Valentine last night before the storm warnings on the radio told us to get inside a stable building and do it quick, so we made our way there through mile after mile of flat farmland. This place is just grass, crops and sandhills as far as the eye can see - except for a small town called Ainsworth (which, of course, we had to stop and take a look at, although it was quite amusing that their main selling point is that they are in the middle of nowhere!). Valentine really plays on its name by having red and white road signs with love hearts on as well as all manner of 'romantic' references. But, really, it doesn't need to trade on its name because it is a really pretty, yet deathly quiet, cowboy town with Wild West buildings and shops. We took a look around a store that sold hundreds of saddles, spurs, cowboy boots etc before riding on out of town. Just east of Valentine is the Fort Niobrara Wildlife Refuge where you can drive through the plains and see prairie dogs, buffalo, elk etc as well as some of the most beautiful scenery in the world around the Niobrara River. We took a walk down to a waterfall and fought with the enormous insect life, but we never saw a single buffalo (2-0 to the bison). The trip to the Refuge was entirely worth it for the prairie dogs though.They were the cutest little things, looking a bit like small gophers but with the actions of Meer cats as they stood totally still on top of their mound, trying to decide if we were a danger to them or not.They are called prairie dogs because when they sense danger they give a distinctive bark.We heard them squeak a fair bit, and we found out they do this to signal to the others that the coast is clear, so we obviously weren't menacing enough!Our next stop was Mitchell, over the border in South Dakota, but the 200 mile drive there was astounding beauty with nothing but plains all the way. When we got to our destination we made straight for the famed Corn Palace which is a city hall covered in naturally coloured corn on the cob, bushels and corn-straw to make pictures. They re-do the Corn Palace ever year at a cost of $100,000 and so make different pictures each time.This year's theme was "Everyday Heroes" and included Abraham Lincoln with a Washington DC backdrop and (of course) the Mount Rushmore heads.It really is quite a sight and, when lit up at night, looks like Blackpool on acid. I think we finally managed to score a late goal on the bison though - for dinner we had buffalo ribeye steaks!

30th - We got up and took a scenic drive, avoiding the interstate, to the capital of South Dakota, Pierre.The drive took us around a huge lake which sparkled clear and bright blue in the clear sunny skies, as well as through two Native American reservations.We saw one tepee but didn't have the camera out in time and so missed the shot, but the rest of the reservation was just like any modern American neighbourhood, although, if we are honest, without the American flags and with much more litter (something we truly see hardly any of in America).The drive took us in to Pierre and straight to the state capitol building where, for the first time in all our visits to state capitols all across America, there was no security to pass through and the only available tour was self guided from a booklet we picked up as we went in.The majority of the time we were in the building there was no one else around at all, it was like having the whole place to ourselves.In the Governor's Reception Room the Governor's receptionist asked us if we had just come from Custer State Park where they have just had the annual round up of the buffalo - 3-1 to the buffalo it seems!Moving on we checked into a hotel and then went to a cute local diner for burgers and chocolate malt (Kirsty is really going to struggle without them in the UK and is already trying to think of ways she can recreate them when she gets back!) and then went back to the hotel for an early night as we have not been getting to sleep until gone 2 a.m. recently and so we are shattered!

1st October - We left Pierre and less than half a mile down the road we crossed into Mountain Time, so we are now 7 hours behind UK time.Our journey to our intended destination, Badlands National Park, was long and mainly on interstate but we saw adverts for a place called 1880 Town, so we pulled in for a look.Basically they have taken buildings from the 1880's from all over the US and put them here together to make a full town.You can take a look at 1880's houses, a barber shop, bath house, general store and many others, including a fabulous authentic saloon.They also have a small farm there and so we were able to see Longhorns, horses, Kirsty's favourite the donkeys and, strangely enough, a camel.We were rather concerned about the thinness of two of the horses there but when Kirsty enquired about that she was told it was just because they were old, we just hope that's right.We carried on our journey to Badlands but just before we entered into the park we saw a place at the side of the road where you could buy unsalted peanuts in their shells to feed to the prairie dogs.Well we had to give that a go so we pulled off, put some money in the box for a few bags of peanuts (the place was closed and so they had just left the feed out with a box to put money in, in the hope that people would be honest) and walked on to the adjoining prairie where we could see lots of prairie dog mounds.I started to throw the peanuts near the holes in the hope of attracting some interest in the food, and the little things came scurrying out and eating them right in front of us, holding them in their paws and gnawing through the shell before discarding that and chewing on the nuts inside.Ralph however, always much braver than me, simply went up to where a large group of them were and started feeding them by hand.They were so sweet and didn't mind taking them from our hands, even standing up on their back paws to get them from us as we were taking them out of the bag.We managed to get some great close up pictures and Ralph even managed to find one that particularly liked him (or the peanuts!) and let him stroke it while it was eating.After buying some more bags of feed and doing it all over again, we decided we must push on and leave the prairie dogs behind.We entered Badlands National Park just afterwards and were amazed.From miles and miles (and almost an entire states worth of totally flat land, comes this area where crevices plunge into nothing and rock spikes which stab sharply into the sky.The rocks have different colour bands around them from where they have been created over millions of years from different types of minerals.The area was called "makosica" (badland) by the Native Americans.Our guidebook describes the area as like seeing an ocean someone burned all the water out of, and that's a better description than anything we could come up with.We saw some buffalo up on the hills but they were too far away for us to see them properly, so we are still looking for somewhere we can get up close (not too close though, they do charge at people and can run 25 mph!) to them.Leaving the Park we carried on to an area called Black Hills, so called because the Native Americans thought the hills, covered with dark Ponderosa pine, looked black.Ralph and I think they would have been better calling them Green Hills, but we are not about to start a fight with the Native Americans!The Black Hills are a sacred, spiritual and ancestral home for the Lakota Sioux tribe, and so there was great anger at choosing this place for Mount Rushmore, an argument which still goes on to this day, despite the fact that there is a memorial to Crazy Horse being blasted into the mountain close by at this very moment (and has been for the last 60 years).The main problem was that when the settlers came and decided to take the majority of the Native American's land from them, they promised that they could keep the Black Hills (how kind of them!) as it meant so much to them and their history.Then gold was found in the Black Hills and that promise went by the wayside as they took that land too and pushed the Native Americans aside, the Native Americans are still fighting to get this land returned to them.We were actually staying the night in a place called Deadwood, which is the place that inspired the TV series Deadwood and is really a cowboy town but with a huge gambling problem!Every place there has a casino, no matter what sort of establishment it is.Our hotel had one and the only restaurants there are restaurants located inside casinos.Saying that, its is the norm in South Dakota for petrol stations to have casinos inside, so when you are lining up to pay for your petrol you can hear the shrill noises of the machines as people play them.Once we had checked into our casino/hotel (pleasantly located on the banks of a creek - a bargain at $30.00 for the night) we headed into Deadwood itself which was, well, dead!!There was no one around really, just the odd person playing the slots.We headed to Saloon 10 which is one of the saloon's still around from the 1800's and where Wild Bill Hickok used to hang out and was shot dead.After some initial trouble actually getting into the place (you had to be 21 and they would not believe Kirsty was 21 and said that if she did not bring them some acceptable i.d., there was no way we were going in.After complaining a lot and showing them some i.d. which they deemed unacceptable time and time again, they begrudgingly let us pass) we were amazed. It was like stepping back into the Old Wild West with the old saloon doors to get in, sawdust on the floor, card gambling tables inside etc.We turned up just to watch an actor playing Wild Bill Hickok in the story of his life in the back room of the saloon (the actor was fantastic and was in the series Deadwood with Ian McShane - he asked us to say hi to him on his behalf when we got back to England!).After the entertainment we posed for pictures and then went for out dinner before heading back to the hotel.

2nd - We drove from Deadwood a short distance to another cowboy town called Lead, where gold was discovered all those years ago and mining only stopped in 1998.We got to see the 944ft deep open cut of the gold mine, which shows exactly what mining does to a mountain and were intending to go on one of the tours of the mine, but we found out that the tours are only of a reconstructed mine, not the actual one, so we decided to give it a miss and drove on to Mount Rushmore.Once you get to Mount Rushmore and pay to get in (although they say its free to get in and you are only paying to park, but there is no public transport at all in that area and you can't get to it unless you go by car!), you walk through an avenue of all the state flags before arriving at the Grand Terrace viewing platform.There the faces of four American presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln have been carved into the mountain and stare out at the lands around.Personally, we thought that Theodore Roosevelt was a really strange choice and didn't fit with the achievements of the other three, but we found out while we were there that Roosevelt was good friends with the sculptor and that explains everything to us!!The landmark is done really well and has a fantastic audio tour, a gift shop, a museum where you can find out about the sculptor and his family and the men that were employed to work on it as well as much more.It took 14 years to complete and was created by actually blasting the rock using dynamite into the shape of the faces as opposed to actually carving it, as the granite was too hard to be able to do anything else.It's an impressive sight, and actually nice to see something that is used so often to symbolise America.After leaving the monument we drove the short distance to Crazy Horse Monument, which I would imagine is like seeing Mount Rushmore being created, as the monument has been in progress for the last 60 years, and looking at it, it still had decades of work before it's finished.The main reason it is taking so long is that the project is privately funded as opposed to government funded (they have turned millions of dollars of government funding down) and so they can only work on it when they have the funds to do so.Even so, we were told that most days (not today!) you can watch as they blast the mountain in their latest bit of sculpting.All they have so far to show for all that work is Crazy Horses's head and face, and they are currently working on his arm and will soon (although I have no idea what "soon" means here) start working on the horses head.After taking a look at the memorial in progress we watched a video about the man who started the memorial and his family that have continued the work since his death. It will be interesting to see again when its finished, but we are not sure we will live that long!We drove on to Custer and got a hotel in good time for Ralph to watch the vice-presidential debate.

3rd - We got up and, after purchasing carrots from the local store for the "begging burros" (donkeys), we drove to Custer State Park and were immediately greeted by a buffalo at the side of the road right next to us.It was amazing to finally see this huge animal and it didn't seem bothered by us stopping in the cat next to it and taking pictures.Turns out we got the right park for this as the Ranger told me that they have around 1,500 buffalo and, while the females and calves are kept in an enclosure at the side of the road for visitors to see, the males are left to wander the park as they wish, because if they put them in the enclosure they often crush and kill the calves.So, as well as being able to see hundreds of buffalo in the enclosure (which was the size of a British town and was in no way what you would expect from an enclosure), we could also see the big males all the way round the park, occasionally on the road and standing straight at the side of us, which was amazing.We did have to be careful though as the buffalos can be dangerous and have been known to charge people and, at 2,000 pounds in weight, can cause huge amounts of damage.They can also run up to 25 mph!We also got to Kirsty's favourite part of the park, where the begging burros hang out.These donkeys wait for cars to slow down to see them and then trot over to them to see if they have brought them anything to eat.If you have brought them something, as in our case, they surround the car (Ralph had to push one out of the way to get back in the drivers seat!) and stick their heads into the windows trying to be the one that gets the food first.Luckily we had bought two bags of carrots so all donkeys got some carrots, but we struggled to wind the windows up when they were all gone, and had to be careful not to trap their heads!We also saw whitetail deer, mountain goats, elk etc, and it was a great park to visit.We then carried on to Wind Cave National Park, passing tons of more bison on the way.We had been told that the main feature of this park was the 98 mile long cave, where you feel strong gusts at the entrance, yet not inside.However the National Park only wants you to pay to go on a tour of the cave and do not want you to go to the cave on your own without paying!We therefore found a back route and found that the National Park has actually but a revolving door at the cave entrance, so you can no longer feel the gusts the Park is actually named after, and have put a large metal gate beyond that which they keep locked until they take their tour group there.We didn't really want to take a tour of the cave so, after seeing some wild turkeys, we moved on to Hot Springs, Nebraska.We had been told that there were natural hot mineral springs there and, if we headed out of the town, where all the natural springs have been commercialised into spas etc., we could find a place where the locals go to swim in the springs without paying, as its part of the natural countryside and not owned by any commercial business.However, the locals are obviously not stupid and have done a good job of hiding the springs, as we were not able to find them and there were no signs anywhere along the road.We were really disappointed that we had not been able to swim in the hot springs but, as there was nothing we could do, we headed on to the town of Alliance to see Carhenge, a replica of Stonehenge made of 34 discarded cars.It was a strange thing to see in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere!Finally we booked a hotel in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, ready for our mammoth journey to Wyoming tomorrow.

4th - Happy re-30th birthday to my friend Jenny!!We started the day at Scotts Bluff National Monument where you can either hike to the top in a few hours or drive up in a few minutes (I don't need to tell you which one we opted for!).The views from the top over Nebraska and Wyoming are impressive, although we did choose the wrong day for it as the clouds were quite low on the horizon and we had a storm coming.We left there and had a 6 hour drive ahead of us to Sheridan in Wyoming.We passed lots of actual cowboy towns where it looked like people had not passed through in centuries, and we were the only people driving a vehicle in the state that were not wearing cowboy hats.Other than that the drive was quite unremarkable apart from the vast amounts of road kill, including a coyote.Wyoming looks like someone has painted a landscape painting but only had sand colour left in the paint box - absolutely everything is the same colour, the mountains, the hills, the prairie, the plains…all sand coloured!!We drove along the Laramie and Bighorn mountains and arrived in Sheridan in time for a quick look around a outfitter shop for cowboys (they were buying lassos and such like in there!) we went for a Mexican meal and settled in for the night.

5th - We had another long drive today through the Bighorn Mountains to Yellowstone Park.The drive was a long one all the way across the state of Wyoming and so we were just intending to go straight to the hotel, via some outstanding scenery, and start our exploration of Yellowstone tomorrow.Even though the weather is still warm and sunny (we have been incredibly lucky with the weather on this entire trip) there was snow on the peaks of the Bighorn mountains which Ralph was very excited to see - he thinks we have a chance of going skiing on this trip but I think we will be returning to England before the snow is good enough to ski on in the ski areas and it would mean renting all the equipment and clothing again so I am championing giving it a miss.We really wanted to stay in Yellowstone Park but the Park owns all the accommodation and every place is either full or closed for the season, so we have ended up with one of our regular Super 8 hotels outside the Park and we will have to drive in every day, although it's only about a 5 mile drive.Around 20 miles from the East entrance to Yellowstone Park (there are 5 entrances in all) we passed a big sign telling us we were entering a grizzly bear area and we should watch out for bears, ensure all rubbish was placed in the special bins, backtrack slowly if we came across a bear that had not seen us and, if we came across a bear that did see us, we had to make ourselves look big, flap out coats and shout and hope it would not attack, anything but run actually, as this can make them attack.This meant that I was on bear watch in the passenger seat and had Ralph pulling over every few minutes so I could go down to the streams and creeks to look for bears.We were disappointed when we reached the entrance to Yellowstone and we had not seen one, but we were informed that there were bears in the Park and, although seeing them in rare, we had a slight chance.We had to drive through Yellowstone to get to our hotel which was located just outside the North entrance. This meant an 90 mile drive through a small section of the Park!Yellowstone is honestly quite unlike anything we've ever seen. It has weather systems that change every ten miles, mountains, plains, bizarre geological features such as hydrothermal areas and incredible wildlife.Every ten miles the weather changed completely, from warm and sunny to rolling black clouds and light rain to snow.It was amazing for the weather to change so completely so often.As we drove through the Park it was hard to leave all the sightseeing for another day and so I convinced Ralph to take a look at the Mud Volcano.Wow!This area was incredible.Steam came up from the ground and mud bubbled away at the side of the walkways, water boiled and bubbled at the side of us and we were warned that to step from the set walkway was illegal as thin crusts cover the area, meaning that if you stepped on them you could either fall in and boil or boiling water/mud could shoot up and burn/kill you.It was an incredible sight, although I won't say it was an incredible smell experience as the sulphur made it smell like bad eggs, so strong that it even had Ralph gagging!We carried on and saw more buffalo (seriously we can't get rid of them now) and then the car in front of ours slammed on its brakes and we did the same, and a black bear walked straight across the road in front of us!!!We could not believe it and were amazed at how lucky we had been.We watched as it wandered across the plain, seemingly not bothered by the traffic jam it was creating as people stopped to watch it. We didn't manage to get a very good picture because we got the camera out too late and we were having to deal with a Park Ranger who was asking us to find a parking area and stop there (where we would not have been able to see the bear!), but we got a picture, which was better than nothing.Happy we carried on to the hotel (a 2 hour drive all within the park!) and found a lovely little pizza place for tea.