We woke up, had some toast for breakfast (who knew you would miss toast so much after three weeks away from a toaster?), and headed to Yellowstone. Yellowstone is the coolest, creepiest, most amazing place we have ever seen, and we declare right now that every single person reading this blog must head there as soon as possible. We only completed about half of one loop today, focusing our day in the "boiling creepy mud" and "large gaping volcanic hole" section of the park. Luckily, we have two more days to go exploring.
The first thing we noticed about Yellowstone is that there are signs everywhere warning you to stay on the paths because of "geothermal activity", AKA if you are dumb enough to go off the path, you will likely collapse through the thin layer of soil at the surface and get scalded by either boiling hot water or boiling hot creepy mud or sulfuric acid. We didn't see any animals for the first half of the day, probably because they were concerned about the whole being scalded thing. There were colorful, steaming, deep little pools and springs, geysers, and boiling pits of mud and sulfur everywhere. At one area we stopped at a sulfur pond that was bubbling, smelled like rotten eggs, and contained a warning sign that the pond lies somewhere in acidity between lemon juice and battery acid. Creepy and amazing!
Of course, we had to go and see Old Faithful, which did not disappoint. There were many people around, but we still got a good view. She erupted about 10 minutes later than predicted, leading to many antsy kids around us.
Old Faithful erupting:
The first thing we noticed about Yellowstone is that there are signs everywhere warning you to stay on the paths because of "geothermal activity", AKA if you are dumb enough to go off the path, you will likely collapse through the thin layer of soil at the surface and get scalded by either boiling hot water or boiling hot creepy mud or sulfuric acid. We didn't see any animals for the first half of the day, probably because they were concerned about the whole being scalded thing. There were colorful, steaming, deep little pools and springs, geysers, and boiling pits of mud and sulfur everywhere. At one area we stopped at a sulfur pond that was bubbling, smelled like rotten eggs, and contained a warning sign that the pond lies somewhere in acidity between lemon juice and battery acid. Creepy and amazing!
Of course, we had to go and see Old Faithful, which did not disappoint. There were many people around, but we still got a good view. She erupted about 10 minutes later than predicted, leading to many antsy kids around us.
Old Faithful erupting:
Us posing near the sign. It's not only cool but it contains the word/name Faith!
Some of the colorful pools:
More colorful pools, colored by different types of heat-loving bacteria:
We started driving, still disappointed that we had not seen any animals yet besides chipmunks (and for good reason. We kept picturing the chipmunks going up in flames like the poor cat on the movie "Christmas Vacation"). We drove up the road and spent the rest of our evening in lines of cars, pulling over to observe tons and tons of bison, a coyote, some elk, several deer, and lots of other cool wildlife. We went on a little walk to see some more boiling pits of mud, when this character decided to cross our path:
He walked over near one of the steaming pools, and Robbie got this fantastic picture of him:
Later, an elk:
In all, we had an amazing day and took close to 100 pictures. It was very, very difficult narrowing down the batch to choose which pictures to post. We are heading back tomorrow morning!
Wish us luck, because it's cold out there:
Awesome!! I guess I didn't realize just how cool the park was...I had of course heard of Old Faithful...but didn't know the rest. Do you think the buffalo was getting a "steam bath"? It looks like everyone is wearing coats...must be a great change from the boiling temps you have been traveling through. Love you..
ReplyDeleteThe cooler weather is definitely a welcome change!!!
ReplyDeleteI guess Old Faithful wasn’t so faithful that day, huh?
ReplyDeleteSo glad that you got to see Old Faithful erupt..... we missed it the times we went through Yellowstone. Glad that the weather has cooled down....much better than what you have had so far. Love you! : )
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