Yellowstone National Park (23-35)

What a fantastic place - 2.2 million acres of scenery and wildlife. In total, the five of us took well over 1000 photos and about 100 videos. Even after culling similar and blurred photos, I’ve only reduced the number to about 850! Everywhere you turn, there is something interesting and different and worthy of photographing, so trying to select less than 200 to put in a slideshow on the blog has been very time consuming and difficult.

In terms of the available time for us to explore Yellowstone, we weren’t restricted with a fixed date to leave, however, I was very much aware of our need to head further north into Canada and in particular into the Canadian Rockies. As we were heading deeper into autumn, the potential for us to be travelling on icy roads remained my prime concern so we limited our stay to four days. Thus, somewhat disappointingly, we needed to explore what we could in a limited time. Fortunately, the current weather was unusually warm and forecast to stay that way for the next 5 days.

To best use our time, we chose a road called the Grand Loop that traverses much of the park, and this road has two distinct loops, an upper and a lower loop. You really need at least 2 days for each loop to explore most of the identified icons, but much more than that to properly absorb the atmosphere.

Yellowstone is the world’s first National Park which was established in 1872. It sits on top of a live volcano and the crust of the earth at this point is only a few miles thick - this explains why there are so many geysers including the famous, Old Faithful. It is estimated there are over 10,000 thermal features in Yellowstone, no two being alike and apart from geysers there are mud pots, fumaroles and hot springs.

At the heart of Yellowstone’s past, present and future lies volcanism. About 2 million years ago, then 1.3 million years ago and again 640,000 years ago, huge volcanic eruptions occurred here. The latest spewed out nearly 240 cubic miles of debris.

The park’s present central portion collapsed forming a 30 by 45 mile caldera or basin. The magmatic heat powering those eruptions still powers the park’s thermal features. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone gives a glimpse of Earth’s interior; its waterfalls highlight the boundaries of the lava flows and thermal areas.

Rugged mountains flank the park’s volcanic plateau, rewarding eye and spirit. Yellowstone’s wildlife includes bison, elk, grizzly and black bears, swans and trout. Vegetation types range from near-desert vegetation near the northwest entrance to subalpine meadows and forests on Mt Washburn.

Yellowstone alone is a great national park just for its scenery or wildlife, but its history abounds in colourful tales as well of fur trappers, Jim Bridger and Osborne Russell and explorers, surveyors, photographers and artists.

There were so many sights and features to see, we spent over six hours travelling from the western entrance heading anticlockwise, only to reach Old Faithful. As it was almost five o’clock before we saw Old Faithful send a huge plume of steam and water in the air, we decided to continue going anticlockwise around the lower Grand Loop and return home through the centre. If we saw anything outstanding we could come back tomorrow to explore.

As it turned out, there were some great sights, but due to our lack of time, none specifically worth returning to for further exploration. It took us almost 3 hours to complete the journey home so our arrival was in semi-darkness.

As a result of our adventures on the way in to the park, we had already seen 2/3 of the upper Grand Loop, so we decided to return to Mammoth Springs the following day. One of the greatest dangers we faced today wasn’t the bison, elk, deer or chipmunks, it was people on bikes!! So many riders and so little space for passing…

Mammoth Springs

To date we have been very lucky with the weather and despite the temperature dropping just below zero overnight (we were told by the campground folk to disconnect our water hoses from late in the evening till morning), today was to be no exception. The forecast was to have a maximum temperature of about 20 degrees C and in preparation, we packed a picnic basket.

The drive from our campground in west Yellowstone to Mammoth Springs was about 1 ¼ hours and without the Sierra behind, it was a pleasant and easy trip. We stopped frequently along the way and parked adjacent to the Hot Spring Terraces just outside of Mammoth Springs, and walked about looking at, and taking pictures of all the calcium carbonate deposits.

We were looking for a specific area to photograph as we had been enticed by a picture on the front of a brochure promoting the Terraces. An area called Cleopatra’s Falls turned out to be as close as we could find to the picture and to confirm, we thought it best to ask the visitor’s centre later in the day.

There’s not a great deal to write about either Mammoth Springs or the Terraces – they were interesting places to explore and the different patterns in the terraces are worthy of a separate slideshow on the blog.

We went into the visitor’s centre and had our thoughts confirmed that what we were looking at was indeed Cleopatra’s Falls. However, their picture had been taken sometime in 2008 when that part of the falls had still been active.

There was a bench and table outside the centre so decided to have lunch in a grassy, shaded area. Many of the buildings around us were built in sandstone in the late 1800s. At that time they were built as barracks, mess halls and offices for the army. They have been beautifully kept by the National Parks authority who took them over from the army during the 1940s.

Time to head north towards Canada. One stop to go at Dick’s RV Park, Great Falls, a little more than halfway through Montana, then we change countries!