Day 13: More Yellowstone

Okay, I know what you're thinking--the fact that I titled this "More Yellowstone" probably means there won't be cat pictures! Since you're so disappointed, here's a cat picture:

So even though I wasn't 100% better, today we were able to go through most of the rest of Yellowstone. We started off by finishing up in the Norris Geyser Basin, where we got to see a very small amount of splashing from Steamboat Geyser (which has real eruptions only once ever couple of years).

Our next target was Old Faithful, but along the way we managed to catch sight of a couple more wolves (this time very close to the road, visible to the naked eye). Sadly, we were too slow to get pictures of the wolves, but suffice it to say..."YAY WOLVES".

From there, we went on to see more exciting geothermal features, including the exciting mud pots. A mud pot is kind of like a hot spring where the water goes through rhyolite that contains feldspar and where the water also picks up sulfur. As the water reaches the surface, the sulfur is metabolized into sulfuric acid by extremophile bacteria and the acid turns the feldspar into clay, which combined with the water becomes...mud. Depending on the amount of water, this mud can be either really thick or pretty thin. In spring, where there's a lot of runoff from the snowmelt, it was pretty thin, but nonetheless, the mud pots awesome!

We saw a couple of thick mud pots where the mud bubbled upward and a few thinner mudpots that were almost hot springs but where the water was clearly pretty muddy, including one amazing deep red mudpot. 

We also found this rather cute little mudpot with rocks in it. Alex joked that "here's yer problem; ya got rocks in the hole; that'll run ya, oh, $500 to remove" in an excellent southern hillbilly accent.

My reaction to the mudpots was basically: I want to play in them! Maybe someone will turn the mudpots into a marketing strategy for their salon and spa. ("Yellowstone Spa?")

We also got to see the Grand Prismatic Spring, which turns out to be very large and very hard to see at surface level. To really appreciate the spring and see it looking like this

you need to go on a bit of a hike, and since I wasn't feeling *that* good, we only got to see the spring looking like this:

Also, how do they get rid of the steam from the images? A persistent issue with Yellowstone photography is that the things you want to photograph produce tons of steam that get in the way. 

At the same area that contained the grand prismatic spring, there was also this really huge geyser pouring water into a river:

We headed on to Old Faithful, skipping a couple of geyser basins, because we were starting to realize that geysers are much more exciting when they erupt, and just staring at them isn't all that interesting (especially cone geysers, where all you see is the cone; fountain geysers, which are pools of water containing a geyser, at least giver you a nice water pool to stare at). So we wanted to see Old Faithful, which we knew would erupt on schedule.  On the way, we got stuck in a genuine bison jam.  The dang bison decided that the road was the easiest way to get where they were going (I guess they were probably right) and so they just took over our lane.  Fortunately we were able to quickly scoot past them on a pullout.  Ha!

When we got to the Old Faithful visitor center, it was just starting to snow, and we had an hour before Old Faithful would erupt. We decided that the weather was nasty and the walk to see the other geysers in the basin was long, so we spent time in the visitor center. I really enjoyed the museum exhibit, in part because it explained how geysers work. Remember that geysers require some kind of narrow, obstructed passage? But how, exactly, does this passage get obstructed? It gets obstructed by steam! Basically if there's a too-narrow passage inside a geyser, the water gets very very hot and emits steam before going through the narrow passage, and the steam provides enough downward pressure to keep the water from coming up. Eventually enough water builds up in the geyser's underground chambers that the water can break through the steam, but it takes time. (The fact that geysers have underground chambers to fill up helps explain how some geysers are predictable. Of course, the overall sense you get is that the underground plumbing is very complicated, so you can't really predict most geysers.)

The snow continued to fall and the sky got darker and darker as the time of Old Faithful's eruption approached. Since the error bar on the eruption is +10 minutes, we went out into the snow ten minutes before scheduled eruption. Fifteen minutes later, Old Faithful finally erupted. I guess. Actually, since the clouds in the sky were the same color as Old Faithful, it was pretty much impossible to tell that anything was happening. Here's a picture of the eruption (at least I assume it is, based on the timestamp; not like you can see anything).

Since we actually did want to see a Geyser erupt, we've made plans to go back the next day when the weather forecast suggests that the sky will be nicer.

Although it was getting a bit late and the weather was nasty, we decided to continue on to the other main attraction we wanted to see in the park: the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Thankfully, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is at lower elevation and a bit away from the storm.

Now, suffice it to say that the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is really awesome. There are two very well-designed paths along the north and south rims of the canyon, easily accessible via car (thankfully; I was definitely in no shape to do a multimile hike), which various viewpoints that show the canyon, the upper falls, and the lower falls. There's even a trail (Uncle Tom's Trail--no, not that Uncle Tom) that appears to be designed as punishment for people with weak knees--it descends hundreds of steps to the brink of lower falls.

Both upper and lower falls are extremely impressive, but the lower falls, at 308 feet (compared to 109 feet for the upper falls), is the more impressive of the two. In fact, it's twice as high as Niagara Falls (though clearly it has many fewer casinos on its banks). We took the iconic lower falls photo:

Here's what the upper falls looks like:

The falls aren't the only attraction of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone though--no sirree. The sheer magnitude of the cliffs, the colors of the canyon walls and the awe inspiring height and depth are really what you're coming for. Here are some shots and also a panorama:

Emboldened by our success with the Grand Canyon, we decided to head further eastward to view Yellowstone Lake. Here's a picture. Wait, no, we don't have any pictures because the lake was more or less inaccessible due to road closures and as we drove there, the storm that visited us at Old Faithful caught up with us again. By the time we nearly reached the lake, probably an inch of snow had fallen and there was no way we were going to get out of our car to view the lake, so we decided to head back. (We did manage to see Fishing Bridge, which seems like an entirely unremarkable bridge; I have no idea why it would be a tourist destination.)

The ride back was an hour long race against sunset, trying to get to West Yellowstone, Montana before darkness turned the snow storm, which kept getting worse, into an even bigger danger. There is nothing quite like driving on an inch or more of snow, with trees lining the road on both sides, heavy cloud cover, a falling sun, no cell reception and an hour to civilization to make you appreciate the fact that there IS civilization an hour away and appreciate that Yellowstone is not a kid-safe playground. 

Below: A break in the storm

Fortunately, I was able to put my snow driving experience from Massachusetts to work and safely got us out of the park before sunset. 

We managed to find a motel and a restaurant where the service was extremely speedy--even if the food was, well let's just say that Alex and I are sick of small town bar food.

Tomorrow, our return to Yellowstone, our trip into Grand Teton National Park, and Alex learns that Jackson Hole is a ski destination.