Montana & Wyoming Day 8 - Bozeman, MT to Cody, WY

There was a day I'd been looking forward to since before I embarked on this trip. A day I thought would be simply awesome. Today, departing south out of Bozeman, we were headed towards Yellowstone National Park.

Alas, I was wrong. The day did not turn out simply awesome. No, it was far from it. It was magnificently-brilliantly-incredibly-awesome. Words failed us - in fact the only thing to be heard in the helicopter for most of the day was the odd gasp as we entered the next valley and found even more amazing scenes.

Here's what I did today:

• Spotted a solitary male buffalo hiding under a tree out the side window whilst travelling at 100+ mph through low visibility - oh yes, my misspent youth playing all those sniper video games has at last paid off!
• Climbed to 12,000 ft - higher than Simon, our pilot, had ever taken a helicopter
• Skimmed over ice lakes
• Filmed herds of buffalo
• Spotted a group of fairly well camouflaged deer in woodland whilst filming something else (seriously, I'm going to change my career to animal-spotter)
• Filmed hot water springs
• Flew down a canyon
• Filmed two dams
• Filmed the place of Custer's last stand at Little Big Horn
• Ate in a restaurant where Buffalo Bill once ate, and where a present from Queen Victoria (an entire ornate wooden saloon-bar - we're talking 30 ft long - now resides)
• Whittled a piece of wood in down time - I'm getting into the whole redneck thing, what with my patriotic get-up, the beard and cap and all
• Filmed native american indians
• Flew down a valley between the ground below, and low lying cloud that was lower than the peaks of the valley - like a tunnel!
• Found the greatest driving road in America
• Ran 3 miles in the morning, 
• And finally, ate a reasonable UK sized sandwich for lunch!

Phew. I'm knackered. I think we filmed a greater variety of things today than we film in some weeks. 

We're now in Wyoming. Tomorrow we are in Wyoming all day, and probably the day after too. I should probably amend the title of these blogs - but that's far too much work! So despite the fact that tomorrow will be a Wyoming day, I'm going to call it Montana Day 9. It's my blog after all!

[Apologies - the internet here seems to be shit - I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to upload a picture from my phone without success. I will try tomorrow from the FBO and update this] Photo below!

Er, in the mean time, how about this:

Buffalo Bill. Badass mofo, and patron of a place that does a damn good half rack of baby back ribs. Avoid their "house" fries. They are shit. Go for mash instead - looked much better!

Caption for the missing photo: Refuelling before entering Yellowstone. This place was run by a real mountain man. The facilities were so basic, that the unisex toilet didn't even have a door - just a sodding curtain! Thank god we were probably the first people to pass by in years!