I like Montana... Idaho... not so much (MCV)

The area around Helena was just as pretty in the morning as it was coming in in the evening. It's in a sort of bowl, surrounded by mountains all around. Driving out of Helena towards Yellowstone we drove in really beautiful arid mountain valleys and a few interesting passes. The tall snowy peaks of the rockies were never very far, although most of what we drove through were smaller, rounder mountains. The rivers in Montana were really pretty, just like 'A River Runs Through It' and there were tons of fishermen out. It was really lovely country! We did go through a canyon that reminded me a little of the Schoellenen, although the rock colour was wrong: pink instead of grey. For those of you who are geologists Yellowstone is an old caldera so approaching Yellowstone we went through mountains of tuff, and glacial valleys with what I argued were moraines but Joel thought were alluvium. It was all pretty incredible. We also saw horizontal beds, maybe folded that way when the valdera blew. In Yellowstone there was so much travertine! Huge hills made up of terraces of deposited CaCo3, it was really neat. In the water live 'thermophiles': little bacteria, etc. that can handle the heat and survive on the H2S (rotten egg gas), which then makes the water safe for other photosynthesising critters. They colour the rock pink and green and make really neat shapes. Amazing how life can exist there. In places where no water runs anymore the carbonate is completely bleached white, and in even older areas it's weathered grey and black. The soil in the area reminds me so much of the soil on land in Cuba: not really carbonate sand, not really soil, just grey and white sandy-gravelly stuff with moss and some grasses growing on it. It wasn't warm like Cuba... And there was no Crystale either. The plateau in Idaho was very snowy and undulating, kind of like Northern Ontario in March. I would not live there... Once we dropped off the plateau it felt like we were in SouthWestern Ontario, only the vegetation was wrong: sagebrush and cottonwoods. I have a feeling the best scenery is behind us until we get to the Sierras later tonight. But who knows, I might like the highway in Nevada better the second time around...