On Monday morning, we awoke to several inches of snow. The car rental company had not thought to give us a snow brush, so it took us a while to get the car ready!
We started at the Midway Geyser Basin. The Excelsior Geyser is yet another spectacular one. This time it had an unusual feature: Someone's had had blown off the boardwalk, right next to the pool around the geyser. It looked like the type of hat that a park employee might be wearing!
Grand Prismatic Sprng is the third largest hot spring in the world (and the largest in Yellowstone).
The next stop was at the Fountain Paint Pot area, with more beautiful sights. It included some mud pots - a strange type of pool filled with mud with bubbles blowing through it. Some days, the mud might even reach the boardwalk; we merely saw some spectacular bubbling!
We usually think of geologic time as being millions of years. However, here was a geyser that is younger than I am! As noted in the sign - an earthquake in 1959 of magnitude 7.2 played havoc with the underground plumbing in the area - and created the new Red Spouter geyser.
Celestine Pool has beautiful blue water - probably due to copper or other minerals. Like so much of Yellowstone, it generates plenty of steam!
As we continued driving, we saw some bison which were enjoying each other's company and ignoring all of the cars driving by.
Gibbon Falls is an impressive waterfall on the (surprise) Gibbon River. Here are some pictures of it:
The next stop was at Mammoth Hot Springs. Like so many other parts of Yellowstone, it has a variety of different features. The natural terraces look like they were chiselled!
Palette Spring is so named for its many colors. Here are some pictures from various angles:
Jupiter Spring has fascinated people as it was active for many years, then dormant, then active.
As we were leaving Mammoth Hot Springs, we saw a herd of elk grazing. Off to the left was a big bull elk with a many-pointed rack. The others were mostly does and calves. They were ignoring the dozens of tourists taking their pictures!
 |
| The big bull elk, moving his herd along |
As we left Mammoth Springs, we drove past the visitors center and hotel, and there were not only lots of people, but also lots of elk, mostly cows. They just sat in the middle of town, seemingly oblivious to the cars and people around them.
We left the park at the north end, and headed into the small town of Gardener looking for lunch. Every restaurant we saw was closed, so we drove quite a long way to West Yellowstone, where we struck gold: we found Wild West Pizza which was very good, reasonably priced, and with nice people serving us. We later on ran into some other tourists at Yellowstone who found the same place and enjoyed it as much as we did. It was nice to return to the hotel room feeling well-fed!
Comments
Post a Comment