The only thing we knew about Yellowstone was Old Faithful (and the Jellystone is a take-off on Yellowstone—which will come into the story in a week). We were not prepared for the animal life OR the scenery OR the hydrothermal activity we were about the encounter.
First of all, the park is HUGE! I thought the Grand Canyon was big, but this place is enormous, too. As we drove, we saw such a wonderful variety of scenery. I immediately fell in love. (I tried not to mention to Dave the fact that a ranger friend of a friend was killed by a serial killer in the park about 8 years back. That would just be bad juju.)
Like before, we would see the Grand Tetons in the distance with snow on them, there were pine trees all around us, and every once in a while, there would be a strange outcropping of rock. (Is that the right term, Julie?)
As we drove from the west entrance to Old Faithful, we had what the guidebooks call a “wildlife jam.” We saw a few mule deer hanging out by the road.
As it happened, we ultimately saw so many mule deer that they became unremarkably—like seeing a squirrel at home. It was amusing, though, because lots of people would have pulled their cars over to the side of the road and would be standing in the middle of the street with their cameras stopping traffic and pointing.
After our first mule deer jam, we came upon the part of the park where steam rises up out of cracks in the earth’s surface. Apparently, this is an active volcanic area, though it hasn’t erupted in 600,000 years (that still qualifies as active). Magma has risen up close to the earth’s surface heating up water underground that begins to boil and vents as steam, hot springs, or geysers. Whenever there is an earthquake in the area, the chambers of water and magma below the earth are likely to change either creating a geyser, hot spring, or steam vent where there had not been one before, or shutting off a geyser, hot spring, or steam vent that had been there. Fascinating stuff!
Before we reached Old Faithful, we found the Fountain Paint Pots.
The Paint Pots are pools of boiling, wet mud that gurgle with gases and steam rising from below the earth’s surface.
This one just looked like a giant mud hole with steam coming out of it. For the record, the venting of the steam was very loud. The sound resembled one of those super vacuums at the car wash.
Also on this property was this beautiful hot spring. The pool was filled with crystal clear water. We could see the water was boiling up from a hole that went really deep down.
While the water was a deep blue in the center of the pool and green near the shallower parts, the edges of it were these amazing yellows, oranges, and reds.
These colors were made of bacteria that thrive in the hot water and the gases that come up from the ground. The layer of bacteria was referred to as a "bacteria mat," but we were warned not to touch it because the oils on our hands would harm the ecosystem by making it difficult for bacteria to adhere to these surfaces.
This area was the first indication that Yellowstone might be a pretty stinky place. The sulfur smell was pretty strong!
Here are some more pictures of other steam vents we saw on our way to Old Faithful.
Spasm Geyser seemed to erupt constantly, but we could have just reached it at an appropriate time.
One of the wacky things we learned almost immediately is that the forest fires in the area cause some pretty amazing things to happen. First of all, many people know that there are controlled burn projects that happen in forests pretty regularly. These are designed to remove underbrush to make complete destruction of the forests less likely in the event of wild fire. However, we also learned that the pine trees that populate this forest have pine cones way up on top that are actually glued shut with pine sap. In its natural environment, only a forest fire will melt the sap allowing the tree to spread its seeds across the freshly burned forest floor. The forest essentially reseeds itself! Fascinating! How does nature DO that?!
A by-product of these fires and the National Park Service’s theories of forestry is that these burned trees are often allowed to remain where they are so that they can decay naturally.
Well, another thing that kills these trees is the eruption of mud, gas, and boiling water from within the earth. Those trees just stand there, too, until they are naturally felled. That’s what’s going on with these awesome tree trunks.
Theater of Weird Signs, Yellowstone Edition:
Here’s the whole of this sign. Its purpose is to tell us not to walk off the designated paths because the earth can be thin, and boiling water or gases could be very close to the surface waiting to burn the skin off your legs.
My two favorite hot springs were the Excelsior Geyser Crater and the Grand Prismatic Spring.
The Excelsior Geyser Crater flowed into the Firehole River that ran through the park. It was very cool to watch the boiling water flow into the cool rushing river.
The Excelsior also had the most amazing blue water. It was hard to believe that this water was somewhere around the boiling point. Yipes!
At Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in the US, we were able to see places where the moose and elk would walk through the bacteria mat, leaving their footprints behind.
That was fascinating.
Notice the beautiful blue steam rising up off the spring into the summer air.
We moved to another point and were able to see this amazing view.
Notice how the steam takes on the color of the water or bacteria beneath it, creating a rainbow. It was truly stunning.
These pictures demonstrate the PLETHORA of weird, dead trees in the Park.
This photo shows Dave at a steam vent that we found right beside the road in the Park.
This photo shows Dave at a steam vent that we found right beside the road in the Park.
We could hear the rushing steam (and smell the sulfur).
I wish this photo, taken near Old Faithful, had come out better.
It reads, "WARNING: Many visitors have been gored by buffalo. Buffalo can weigh 2,000 pounds and sprint at 30 miles per hour, three times faster than you can run."
I, for one, have geeked out many times before and watched Old Faithful via webcam on my computer. I do this with volcanoes, too, and even hurricanes. (Evan calls it a disaster fetish.) Thus, I had an idea about what we were about to encounter with Old Faithful.
It was still quite impressive.
Consider these the "Before" pictures.
We decided NOT to sit with the hundreds of people on benches, and instead, we opted for a view from the exact opposite side, which was physically closer than the benches. Old Faithful erupts roughly every 90 minutes. Apparently, ever since an earthquake a year or two ago, it has been less predictable, but it was spot on for us.
This video shows Old Faithful’s eruption as we sat there. The end of the video shows the water flowing from the geyser to the place where we sat. Luckily, we sat on a bridge that rose about 24 inches off the ground.
After leaving the Geyser, we witnessed our first “buffalo jam.” This buffalo, near the end of his shedding, was happily eating grass and flowers as tourists surrounded him.
As we watched this guy, he assumed what Dave called the “buffalo stance” and took a big dump to show us what the Wild West is really like. I think it was a comment on consumerism myself. ;)
Fields of dead birch trees like these were a common sight.
This was the smallest wildlife we saw. Dave kept calling it a squirrel, so I had to keep correcting him: chipmunk. These guys were super cute, frighteningly quick and erratic, and not at all afraid of people.
The Yellowstone River flows through the Park, and there are several spots where one can look at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.
We chose to see the Canyon from the brink of the lower falls.
This waterfall was 300 feet high, and had a little place of snow to the left of it. This came to be a common sight, but it was still quite weird to me.
We got to the Canyon in the late afternoon, so the sun made some really wonderful shadows on the walls.
Off in the distance on our drive, we could see the snow-covered Grand Tetons. Fantastic!
Another great entry into the Theater of Weird Signs.
At Dunraven Pass, Dave and I noticed a bunch of folks pulled over to the side. We couldn't see what the commotion was until we got out of the car and noticed a small snowball fight in progress. Snow in July.
Notice Dave’s 4-week old beard. Looking good, Mr. Cantwell.
More fantastic scenery.
Another entry in the Yellowstone Edition of the Theater of Weird Signs:
At sunset, we were racing against the clock in order to get out of the park before a 10 pm road closure. The sun didn’t go down until after 9, so I was able to take photos well into the evening.
Here, we are driving through the village at Yellowstone where the employee housing is. The village featured a great little town square that was populated by mule deer!
Having seen buffalo and mule deer, Dave and I were still on the hunt for a bear sighting, and we committed to stopping for a bear jam should we encounter one. If the road closed before we could get there, we would just suffer and take the long way back to West Yellowstone, MT, where we were staying. Luckily, there was no bear jam. We reached the road closure point at 10:05 behind two other cars in the same predicament. When we stopped, the ranger came to our window and told us that the “authorities” had been “extra generous” and were going to allow us to pass. While she was talking to us, another ranger came behind her and pointed to our car, hollering, “Last one! Last car through. No more!” We made it! Woohoo! We were very lucky. Someone has truly been watching out for us on this trip.
We ate dinner at a bar and grille in West Yellowstone that was populated by tired tourists like us and…yes…bikers. Tons of bikers were everywhere in Yellowstone. It was at this point that we decided we would go back to Yellowstone for another day to see more sights.
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