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Edinburgh Day 2

Edinburgh is amazing, I loooove it. The place smells like baked goods and sweets, it’s fairly easy to navigate since there are so many big landmarks, there is so much to do, people seem happy and active. Sure it has its problems, it has homeless folks and petty crime and is expensive like any other major city…but I really, really like it! Today I stopped by an old church called St. John’s near my hotel and the huge old graveyard attached to it with Edinburgh Castle behind, then to Ross Fountain, and walked down to Holyrood Palace. The actual palace is pretty typical, it felt like walking into Windsor Castle all over again, but the destroyed abbey remnants were pretty cool and spooky, both from inside and out.  Despite no rain in the forecast, it started pouring fast and hard in between peaks of brilliant sunshine leading to a series of beautiful, big rainbows while I was at Holyrood. I jumped into a ramen shop and ate while one bad rain patch passed through, it was pretty good ramen…mid-level, a little bland, but good on the stomach.  It’s funny, the British really don’t use salt all that much considering how many people they’ve historically killed for it.  Anyway, once the rain cleared I hiked up Calton Hill to watch the sunset, then decided to call it quits early because it was super windy and cold! I needed to get my hotel and rental car scheduled for tomorrow (pray for me driving in the UK for the first time) and buy some new shoes because the walking shoes I got are apparently not waterproof like I thought they were.  Good thing they have normal shoe stores here, like Skechers, so I got some waterproof boots.  Then I went back to the hotel to pack up for the big trip up to the Highlands!

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London to Edinburgh

I once again was up and at the coach station at 7:45am, but Expedia had the time wrong and it didn’t leave until 8:20am, which sucks because I could have stayed at the B&B and enjoyed a nice breakfast there.  Anywho, I grabbed a coffee and boarded a really neat vintage double decker bus for a tour around town.  Due to the climate protests all over central London our tour was altered and traffic was heavy, but we stopped at Buckingham Palace for a while then drove past the Eye of London, down Fleet Street, past St. Paul’s Cathedral, over the London and Tower Bridges amongst others, and then stopped at the Millbank Millennium Pier to catch a boat.  The boat tour was pretty quick, basically over to Tower Bridge and back, but offered wonderful views of Parliament, the Eye, Tower Bridge, Big Ben (covered and under construction until 2022 though I think) and everything else along the water.  Honestly, if I did it again I’d do it at sunset or at night, I bet that view is gorgeous.  Once we got back to the coach station I picked up my bags from the B&B and took the Victoria line to Kings Cross station.  Of course I needed a cheesy photo taken at Platform 9 ¾ and I sat and waited for my train.  Unfortunately, someone was hit by another train along our route and there were trespassers along another major route, so almost all of the trains were delayed or cancelled.  My original 3:30 train to Edinburg was delayed, then they loaded us in, then they kicked us off and cancelled it.  There was about an hour of confusion before I got confirmation that I could jump on any of the other trains that were running, so I jumped on the 4:30 train and crossed my fingers that I’d eventually get to Edinburg.  Fortunately I was sat next to two lovely people and we chatted and exchanged stories for a couple hours (mainly me talking, travelling solo I don’t get my daily words out!). A Dr. Eeyan Pepper stayed with me until Darlington and was a super nice guy, travelled lots himself and owns a place in Florida.  The second leg I was pretty much by myself so I plugged the headphones in and zoned out for the rest of the trip.  It was after 10pm when we finally arrived, so I scurried through the cold to my hotel about a mile away.  Yotel is in an old building but they completely modernized it, so everything is new and neon and very eclectic.  I was starving, so I went around the corner to KFC and got an interesting combo bucket including a chicken sandwich one (1) thigh piece, a weird salad, and fries. Then went back to the hotel and crashed.

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Grand Teton National Park: Part 2

After the long days on Tuesday and Wednesday I was pretty wiped out.  I slept in until 7ish, and I don’t know if I’m just getting used to it or what but it didn’t seem nearly as cold and I slept pretty well in my blanket cocoon.  I went and got a late breakfast, then changed into already dirty clothes and drove over to the trail ride area.  I rode a lovely, big, brown and black horse named “Ed” with the lady that works at the convenience store, Tanya the waitress, and Christine the horse guide.  We rode on the backwoods trails at a leisurely pace and saw a mule deer and her two babies, a great view of the mulberry creek/wetland area, and the woods that burned back in 2016 and is regrowing.  While we were riding I kept noticing these old large stickup groundwater monitoring wells.  I asked Christine if this area had been used for anything other than the lodge or park in the past, and she said the area used to be an old military area.  That made sense, and would explain why they were/had been monitoring the ground water.  She didn’t know what I was talking about so I pointed out the wells and told her they were probably monitoring for metals, but they were so rusted probably not anymore.  Christine laughed about that because people had been asking her for a while what those were but she didn’t know, now she knows!  Once you start doing environmental work you can’t stop doing it, even on vacation.  In the wetland areas I was still finding myself trying to identify and mentally delineate them. 

After the ride I took a shower to get the horse stank off me, then spent time backing up photos and clearing space on SD cards.  It was almost 2pm by the time I got out of the campgrounds and drove south towards the Grand Tetons.  I stopped at Signal Point and drove up the mountain to a gorgeous view and spoke a little Japanese with a Japanese tourist family, and on my way back down there was a mule deer right next to the road eating. Further down, a full grown bull elk was laying down maybe 50 feet off the road.  I pulled over, of course, and got my telephoto lens out and got some great pictures.  There were two wildlife management officers right there directing people to move closer, or away, or left, or right, depending on what the elk was doing but the elk didn’t seem to care about the people at all.  Eventually he crossed the road and headed off into the woods. 

I continued down to Jenny Lake, and I was going to take the ferry over and climb up to Hidden Falls and Inspiration point, but by this point it was almost 5pm and the weather couldn’t figure out if it wanted to rain or stay sunny.  Given that my feet were already blistered and hurting, I didn’t think I really wanted to hike uphill for 1.5 miles in the rain, so I took a pass on the ferry and wandered the lake perimeter checking out all the cool mountain rocks for about an hour.  Then I went up to Jackson Lodge, which was so busy by the time I found a parking spot I decided to just skip it and go up to Colter Bay Lodge.  This one was calmer, and had their own rock beach, so I again walked up and down the rock beach looking at rocks and enjoying the view. 

Eventually around 7pm I got hungry, so I went up to the marina just north of Colter Bay where the Lodge staff had all been praising the pizza at Leek’s Pizzeria.  To be fair, it was pretty good, especially considering the other options in the area.  You get tired of sandwiches and salads after a few days so a super cheesy greasy pizza really hit the spot.  After eating I wandered across to the marina to watch the sun set and then headed back north to the Lodge.  I stopped by the main lodge to get online for a bit and use the bathroom, and when I came back out noticed lightning coming out from the south, struggling to get over the mountains.  A big group of us sat in the parking lot watching the extreme “War of the Worlds” level light show as the storm made its way over the mountains and towards us.  At first it was just impressive flashes with no sound at all, but once it got over the mountains the thunder was SUPER loud, and once it got too close for comfort I hopped back in my car and went to the camper cabin.  I stood outside chatting with neighbors (and petting their dogs) and watching the light show for another half hour or so before it started to rain and we all ran inside.  When it started raining it rained HARD with almost constant lightning and thunder.  It was pretty cool! Definitely glad I was in the camper cabin and not a tent!