A bit of this, a bit of that

Yellowstone – me September 17, 2008

K just got her pics up on Flickr and T posted his on Shutterfly. Their sets are certainly worth a gander, but here’s a quick look at the shots that I star in.

Yellowstone – the ho hum scenery September 17, 2008

Just some sites you might see anywhere, starting with dawn shots of our walk-in campsite.

Frost on the grass. I stayed toasty warm at night with two sleeping bags, long silk underwear, flannel pjs, wool socks, the worlds ugliest holiday sweater, and my hat and scarf. My fellow campers didn’t want to hear about it.

The next few pics are from the hike along the Yellowstone River up towards the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.



The last two pics are views from Mammoth Hot Springs. I love big open sky.

If I’ve only whetted your appetite for Yellowstone pics, click here to see the entire collection.

Yellowstone – the hydrothermality September 17, 2008

Most of Yellowstone is in a giant caldera – the collapsed remains of a rather impressive volcano that last reared its violent head 640,000 years ago, a mere blink of geologic time. Right now, us non-geologically minded folks see geysers, fumaroles, mud pots, and hot springs as the only evidence of the magma below. I suspect geologists with their fancy laser measurements and special techniques have their own pile of evidence, but I’ll leave you to flip through their scientific journals if you like. Nothing has the page-turning abilities of scientific writing, you know.

First up: Geysers!

Old Faithful thinking about it.

Old Faithful in its glory right at sunset. This geyser has a 90 minute cycle, give or take 10 minutes.

Daisy Geyser. We strolled up and caught it after a fifteen minute wait. We also saw the Castle Geyser go off in the distance. The gurgling, splashing, and whooshing sounds are really cool.

Now for fumaroles, a really fun word to say. Try it if you haven’t already. :)

The Norris Geyser Basin had the most impressive fumaroles and looked like a bizarre landscape from another world. We spent quite a bit of time wandering around and were rewarded with the eruptions of one of its many geysers.

A really cool pile of backlit rocks, vents and steam that we passed. Again, truly otherworldly.

Now on to gloopy mud pots.

I would love to build one of these in my living room. The gurgling, blurbling sounds are amazingly relaxing, although most would give the pervasive smell of sulfur an official “not so much.”

Finally, the hot springs.

You can estimate the temperature of the water by the color of the thermophilic bacteria colonizing it. Orange is cool and blue is toasty, and I was totally geeking out here because the protein that enabled gene sequencing and subsequently the entire biotech industry was discovered at Yellowstone.

Yellowstone – the critters September 17, 2008

I love visiting national parks – the awe, the splendor, the getting away from it all. But visiting Yellowstone was something beyond what I ever expected out of a national park, and now I understand why this site inspired the very concept of a national park way back in 1872. There is just so much “there” there – varied and crazy geology and the most amazing wildlife I’ve ever seen, which is why I’m writing multiple Yellowstone posts.

As soon as we entered the park, we began seeing bison and herds of elk grazing in the roadside pasture land and pulled over multiple times to gawk and photograph.

One member of a large elk herd. It’s mating season, and we were warned that the males were testy. The fly fisherman had conceded wide swaths of the river to these beasts, no doubt inspired by the front cover of the Yellowstone Daily – a blurry picture of a tourist sprinting from a large antlered male. Doubt that turned out well.

A raven hanging out in the Norris Geyser Basin. I picked a book on these magnificent corvids and will have more to share in the near future.

A bison herd in the distance. Far more people are injured by bison than bears because bison are twitchy and aggressive and humans are kinda dumb. When one of these guys strolled through our picnic area, one kid ran up to within 25 feet of the beast to take pics and none of his adults commented.

This is my favorite shot from trip, taken by T as he hung out the car window during a “bison jam” – a long back up of cars waiting for the creatures to amble across the road. This guy let out a huge roar just as we drove by.

This osprey was the last species we saw on our trip. We had also two sitings of coyotes and heard both them and the wolves howling at the nearly full moon each night and morning. The bears stayed out of sight, which made my fellow camper K a very happy girl. The ranger said that there was one small 150lb female black bear in the area, but she was so shy that when a camper accidentally stumbled into her one night, she freaked out and ran away.