ARE WE NEARLY THERE YET? Postcards from an All-American Yellowstone Road Trip

I realise I haven’t written one of these in a while. Basically, I’ve been working on pre-production for my new show The Statesman, so haven’t had much time to write (who knew having actual work took up so much time?!). It does mean I have a show to crack straight into when I get back, which is very exciting. The Statesman is the story of a village where humour is banned and the bitter old man whose job it is to teach them to be funny. It’s funny and silly and poignant and hopefully exactly the kind of thing we all need at the moment. If you want to know more, or dare I say book tickets, here’s the link: https://www.theatrotechnis.com/whatson/the-statesman

In terms of our trip, we’re currently on our way from Toronto to Montréal for the final leg of our , but I want to take you back a few weeks, to our Authentic American Road Trip™. This epic journey took us on a huge 2,216 mile loop, beginning and ending in Denver, Colorado, and taking in six states and some of the most famous American monuments, both man-made and natural, along the way. I thought a nice way to take you along the trip would be to write you a postcard from some of the cooler places along the way. Fair warning: fans of fresh vegetables, look away now.

DEADWOOD, SOUTH DAKOTA

Dear Reader,

Howdy from Cowboy country! Deadwood is the town of Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickock, so I was very excited to go. Being here has uncovered an odd thing in my brain: my exposure to cowboys is mainly through French graphic novels and comics, where the Western is a big genre. I obviously love me some classic Sergio Leone or other Clints, and can get into a neo-Western (Hell or High Water anyone?), but it all started for me in French. This struck me walking along Deadwood Main St and reading all the signs, as I realised I was half expecting the historic markers to be written in French. Of course, this is ridiculous – cowboys are as American as clearing native people off all of this land we’re on – but it felt like it was exposing a bit of wiring in my brain, where language and formative childhood influences are intertwined.

Also, Deadwood has turned itself into a casino town, which has revived the economy but killed a lot of its charm.

Yours riding off into the sunset,

Q x

BUFFALO, WYOMING 

Dear Reader,

Everything is better when smothered in Buffalo sauce.

Much love,

Quentin

P.S. Buffalo is actually very nice – everything I hoped Deadwood would be, in fact. It helped that we splashed out and stayed in the coolest hotel of the whole trip, The Occidental. It’s straight out of a Western – suitably creaky and spooky in the dark, and has bullet holes in the walls from past gunfights. Yes please. I’m enclosing too many photos because it’s impossible not to.

Creepy dark historic hotel corridor under lights

Swipe right

CARTER, WYOMING

Dearest one,

Greeting from an actual ghost town! The vibe was immediately strange as we passed by these buildings, a little cluster in the middle of the endless scrub, most of which had smashed windows and assorted rusting objects on the scraggy yards outside them. One bit of colour stood out with a shocking vividness: a bright pink child’s bike leaning up against the wall of one of the houses. In fact, there were a few of these in different colours dotted around the garden, all looking creepily shinier than anything else. I think that was the detail that made us stop. Morbid curiosity made us reverse to take another look. It looked deserted, but there was enough of a sense that there might be someone there that we didn’t dare get out. If someone did live there, they definitely had a gun and an unfriendly attitude to strangers poking about. A giggly panic overtook us, and we drove away – though if asked, I will insist that it was only Leyla restraining me that stopped me from getting out of the car and taking a good look around.

We looked it up when we got to the hotel; Carter was listed as having a population of 10 in 2010, and 0 in 2020. Though there are also unconfirmed rumours that one man still lives there …

Yours in consternation,

Quentin

Carter city centre.

GREYBULL, WYOMING

Dear Reader,

A magical “only in America” moment today. In the Greybull Town Museum, the lady points us to some famous dinosaur footsteps just up the road. “Just up the road” doesn’t quite cover the endless muddy track, by the end of which the car is so filthy we start worrying about whether we can return it. The further we go, the more we start to doubt that we’re in the right place. The Wyoming landscape, always otherworldly, is looking more and more like the moon.

It seems incredible that there will be anything man-made at the end of this. But lo and behold, here’s the carpark, complete with bathrooms and info signs on the dinosaurs that passed through here 187 million years ago. It’s also unexpectedly full, mainly with horse trailers. Just beyond, a group of actual cowboys at work branding the young ones in the herd. Watching them makes me feel for the lowing, confused calves, and also understand just how skilled the competitive rodeo riders we saw on TV were. Also, all the women wear bright pink hats. Because how else could you tell who the girl-cowboys are?!

The footsteps are also incredible. I’m not much of a dino guy (certainly not compared to the bloke there in the Jurassic Park hat), but it does feel profoundly moving to be able to literally walk in the footsteps of creatures who lived here so long ago. It has the same effect on me as looking at a starry sky, a feeling of cosmic smallness but also a deep gratitude of existence. Still not gonna buy a dinosaur cap, though.

Yours in cosmic smallness,

Quentin

One small step for a Velociraptor...

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, VARIOUS STATES

Dear Reader,

Here we are. The big one. The reason for this whole All-American-Road-Trip™: Yellowstone National Park. It’s a breathtaking place, the combination of landscape, wildlife and geo-thermal activity making it like nothing else in the world. It’s the kind of place that has you reaching for religious imagery, and it’s easy to see why the sulphur-scarred landscape and smoking caves would have seemed like something God-like (or devilish) to earlier humans.

But I know you don’t read these for my Attenborough-style natural observations, so I’ll skip to the good parts, starting with a moment that is still seared into my eyelids when I close them, nearly a month later:

We’re driving along in the Southern part of the park. We’ve already seen eight grizzly bears (these are on the highest podium of animal sightings at the park, along with wolves and black bears); two separate mothers with their cubs, grazing a field in the distance. Even at this distance, their loping power and grace is transfixing, and a huge group of us stand and watch them through binoculars for at least half an hour. Back in the car though, we’re going along at the park maximum of 40 miles an hour, another car coming in the opposite direction, when a huge male Grizzly gallops out of the forest on our left. Leyla slams on the brakes, as does the other car. The bear, enraged by the sudden screeching, roars and rears back slightly on its hind legs, looking directly at us with shining black eyes. Then it careers off into the forest on the other side of the road, disappearing in seconds. The whole thing lasted less than half a minute, but that snapshot of the bear reeling back and roaring is one I’ll never forget.

In the end, we see 14 (yes, fourteen) bears in 3 days. Our final encounter is also the cutest: a cub taking a nap in a tree (I enclose a picture, though it’s slightly hard to make out). A large group of us have gathered to gaze at the cub. Then someone spots Momma bear wandering out of view at the base of the tree. Most people get back in their cars sharpish.

A picture of a bear from a safe distance.

Spot the baby bear in the tree.

A word on Yellowstone tourism: if you haven’t planned a hike or aren’t looking at a geo-thermal site, the main way of exploring the park is by cruising round until either you see something, or – more likely – you spot a large group of parked cars. After a couple of days, you begin to decode the meaning based on number of cars pulled up:

1-2: probably people having a picnic. Quite possibly one car having a picnic, and another car who pulled in and are now wondering what the first car saw.

2-5: People who are still impressed by elk or bison in the distance. No shade on bison, magnificent creatures that they are, but you do get over them quite quickly. The first one we saw was a horned speck about a mile away, and we immediately pulled over and took horrible, grainy pictures. By the end of our time at the park, we wouldn’t stop for a bison unless they literally crossed the road in front of us. Which they did a few times, and was always cool, to be fair.

5-10: A cool bird (e.g. eagle or Osprey), a daddy elk (not sexist I swear, horns just look cooler), or a mountain goat (this was actually one of the coolest sightings of the trip).

10+: BEARS! Or wolf, but they’re very hard to see. I reckon a daddy moose would get these numbers too, but again, we missed the moose.

Yours lost in nature's splendour,

Quentin

Otherworldly landscapes all over the shop.

LAVA HOT SPRINGS, COLORADO

Dear Reader,

Into the last stretch of the trip, as we wend our way back through Utah towards Colorado. Swimming every day, including in the Flaming Gorge, which is probably the most incredible view I’ve ever seen (see above and below). We’ve also entered the “Hot Springs” period of the road trip, stopping off at various places to sample the naturally hot waters and all their supposed healing qualities.

I wanted to relay the following exchange verbatim, overheard in a boiling hot pool in Lava Hot Springs, though what it shows us about the healing powers of natural springs I’m not sure. This

took place between two middle-aged men: one enormous, sat in his Bermuda shorts (Trump Supporter, or TS), and the other lying flat with his legs in the water, tanned and sporting a dyed blond handlebar moustache, Hulk Hogan style (Anti-Trump, or AT). They had been getting along quite well, bonding over their love of the army and conspiracy theories, when the TS brings up Trump. I think he believed this was an easy win, bonding wise, and based on the start of their chat, I can’t blame him. From there, the conversation deteriorated rapidly. For us, listening quietly, the highlight was definitely the following section:

Trump Supporter: I shoulda worn my Trump hat!

Anti-Trump: The one made in China?

TS: No, no, it’s not a MAGA hat. It’s unofficial.

AT: It’s almost certainly still made in China.

TS: No!

AT: You think it was made in America?

TS: Yeah! Made in America! It has FOUR American flags on it!

Yours in cheap laughter,

Quentin xx

DENVER, COLORADO

Dearest one,

And now, the time is here. The two weeks are up. We’re back at Denver airport, over two thousand miles (but how many more precious memories???) later. This being my last postcard, I wanted to sum up some general impressions from our time in the heartlands of America.

I don’t know how much this is down to the cult of celebrity, and how much is due to isolation and not having professional sports teams in every town, but high school students are treated like celebrities here. We drove through one small town where Main Street was lined with enormous banners of the graduating class of 2025, with a particular (depressing, unsurprising) focus on football players and cheerleaders. Is this as weird as it seemed to us, or just a sweet way of celebrating their young people? It felt like a lot of pressure to be putting on them to me, but then Americans do love a graduation ceremony. Cute as it is to see a Kindergartener in full graduation robe and hat, I can’t help wondering what they had to do to earn their ceremony… Not eat the crayons provided? Sometimes it’s comforting to withdraw into curmudgeonly Britishness.

The other thing that strikes me as we travel through so much of the US in such a short space of time, is that this is definitely a continent rather than a country. I think it comes from following the Westward trajectory of American expansion in the first week, the same direction the Indigenous people were forced to take, and the way the religious extremists (hello, Brigham Young) and white-supremacist settlers followed, when they realised there was mineral and financial gain to be had in these lands they’d initially dismissed. As I mentioned in my Crazy Horse blog, you get snippets of this movement of various peoples in the museums (the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody is a highlight), but also in the yellowed newspaper snippets framed on the walls of hotels and saloons. You also understand that this land was fought for and conquered, not just from the Indians, but from Mexico and the British as well.

A visual metaphor.

I now think the United States is best compared to the Roman Empire, a huge continuous landmass that was conquered or bought up bit by bit. The “American Empire” is often used to talk about US soft power, or their economic dominance or the malign underhand influence of the CIA, but they were always an empire, with the land mass and campaigns of conquests to prove it, from the moment they began their expansion from the initial settler colonies in the East. So much clicked into place for me when I visualised the country like this, from the military fixation to the political and cultural divides that run through it like a six-lane highway cutting through a town of two thousand people.

Yours ending on a serious point,

Quentin xx

And there we have it, your Road Trip post cards. I’ll be back soon with an update from our two week stay on an idyllic Marxist puppet commune, but until then, don’t forget to check out The Statesman, and don’t melt.