A day in Yellowstone NP
It
was a pleasure to visit Yellowstone this time. For some reason Tim and I, have
managed to plan our earlier vacations so well, that we have always visited the
major and most crowded national parks on weekends. But this time we succeeded in
avoiding weekends both in Yellowstone and later in Grand Canyon.
After breakfast we returned to the park. From Mammoth Hot Springs
Village we followed the western leg of Grand Loop Road (primarily to avoid
roadworks in the mountains after the Tower Junction on the eastern leg). When we
reached the cetnral part of the number eight, that is Grands Loop Road, we
turned east to Canyon Village, where we made our first stop. Here Tim bought a
Stetson to relieve the won hat, he had used since 2010. Afterwards the Stetson
virtually didn't leave his head for the rest of the trip.
After visiting the Grand
Canyon Village , we drove to one of the viewing points from where you can enjoy
the Lower Fall of the Yellowstone River, the river's highest waterfall , which
is very impressive. The fall is 310 feetl, twice the height of Niagara, but not
nearly as wide. When we had seen and duly photographed the fall, we drove on and
we agreed that we didn't want to spend time at other waterfall viewing points.
Instead, we continued south through Hayden Valley. Just as the Lamar Valley also
Hayden Valley known is for its rich wildlife, but at this time roughly in the
middle of the day, all we saw was bison galore and a few geese and swans.
Next stop we made in one of
the valley's few geyser areas. The area is named after one of the hot springs,
Mud Volcano, which is neither a geyser
nor a volcano, but a large, boiling mud
hole. There are several interesting hot springs in the area, not least Sulphur
Caldron , where the water is 197° F and with an acidity like battery acid, but
nevertheless bacteria thrives in the spring. The stench here is quite
"interesting", but it obviously didn't bother the bison that had settled a few
meters from the spring, and we also observed bisons next to several of the other
sulfuric springs in the area. When the smell got to "eggy", we drove further
south, passing the road to the southern exit and from there we drove north again
, or rather northwest.
Next
stop was Old Faithful. Here there were a lot of people, but again far fewer than
last time we visited. We had no problems locating a parking space, and from the
parking lot, we walked straight to the geyser, where the many people that
were gathered, indicated that an eruption was imminent. And 10 minutes later the
geyser began a long and high eruption. After the show we walked back to the
General Store to stock up on fruit and water. Then I placed myself in a rocking
chair on the veranda, where I sat and rocked while the kids went for a stroll on
Geyser Hill behind Old Faithful. I had back pain and thought that one single
stroll would be enough, and I would rather enjoy the next one, later in the day.
Half an hour later Tim and Tina returned, and then we found the car and drove
further north to Midway Geyser Basin.
It was here Dorte and I met Jens and
Annette in 2006 , see the article "Statisically
Impossible" on the
2006 travel page.
This time we met no one we knew though. We parked the car and walked around the
path that leads past Excelsior Geyser, that is actually a hot spring, not a
geyser, and Grand Prismatic Spring, which is actually the largest hot spring in
North America and the third largest in the world. Here it is especially the
colors that impress From clear blue over lighter blue to yellowish green
and red colors at the edge and in the run-offs from the spring. The blue in the
middle occurs because water simply is blue (not transparent as you might think),
and the other colors are due to bacterial growth. But even if the spring is
large, the produced water volume is relatively small, only approx. 2,100 liters
per minute in comarison with 15,000 liters from the far smaller Excelsior Geyser.