Yellowstone National Park: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River

Lower Falls, 308' roaring with winter snow melt.

The American explorer John Muir wrote of the High Sierra's:

'We are now in the mountains and they are in us…'

I so appreciate his sentiment, each time I am exposed to the mountains whether its the Coast Range, the Sierra Nevada's, the Cascade Range, the Rockies, I am in awe and feel energised by their majesty.

Day 3 in Yellowstone and we drove the Grand Loop.

One of the highlights of the park is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River with its impressive waterfalls and steep colorful canyon walls.

Yellowstone River from the South Rim Road.

Colorful canyon walls from blinding white to deep ochre.

Yellowstone National Park: Norris Geyser Basin

Porcelain Basin, Norris Geyser Basin

The large acidic Norris Geyser Basin has the display of the hottest, oldest and most dynamic geysers. 

Steamboat Geyser is located at Norris and is the world's tallest geyser, erupted last on the 31 July 2013 reaching a height of a 30 story building. It has frequent smaller eruptions from 3 to 14 meters  we watched the smaller eruptions and missed the more impressive 10 meters. I was secretly hoping for the biggie to celebrate my upcoming birthday…oh well, Vixen was just as much fun.

Steamboat Geyser

Yellowstone National Park: action from a boardwalk

The park has well laid out boardwalks that meander around the thermal basins.

Fumaroles and bubbling hot springs are a constant.

We have been so fortunate to be walking on a boardwalk as a geyser erupts.

As did Vixen Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin.

She is a perfect rock vent, which looks man-made in its symmetry. The geyser vent fills up and drains much like a toilet, and in between erupts with style.

Each water drop was gleaming in the late afternoon sun.

Fabulous Vixen Geyser.

Yellowstone National Park: Mammoth Hot Springs

Day 2 and another very special day seeing how geology and biology interact!

At some point a sea created the limestone layer at Mammoth Hot Springs, add the super heated water plus the thermophiles and you get a vast stepped, cascading plateaus of travertine stone. As it is being built it is as soft as chalk.

So graceful and beautiful.

Birding interlude: the brightest of Bluebirds

A pop of color among the thermal wonders of Yellowstone, a Mountain Bluebird, quite oblivious to all the fuss of people and erupting geysers.

Yellowstone National Park: bacterial mats from Grand Prismatic Spring

Close up of the mats

One of the most fascinating features of the geyser basins here in Yellowstone is the extraordinary colors of the bacterial mats.

These beautiful colors were a surprise to me, and no more so than at Grand Prismatic Spring.
The hot water flows over swathes of brilliant yellow, orange, red, and green and the hot pools are lined with color too.

And they are living and thriving creatures, called thermophiles! In the billions they form these bacterial mats, a parallel universe indeed.

The facsination of Grand Prismatic Spring and its run-off. 

Hint of the amazing colors of the spring under all the steam.

Outer space? a close up.

Eerily otherworldly.

Yellowstone National Park: thermal wonders

Boardwalk trails

 

A walk among thermal wonders…water bubbles and hisses, bacteria creates otherworldly colors, hot water trickles, the ground holes with puffs of steam. 

Amazing landscape. Fumaroles, hot springs, geysers, mudpots, vast areas of surreal color and shape.

Yellowstone National Park: delight of geysers

 Even more exciting was stumbling upon a geyser eruption!

This was Beehive Geyser, we were drenched, walking to the Old Faithful Inn to have lunch and suddenly hundreds of thousands of litres of hit water spewing into the air!

Beehive Geyser,

Later in the afternoon driving along Firelake Drive we were waiting for a potential eruption and in the background of the photo below is White Dome, a conical geyser. We decided to walk towards the feature to photograph its volcano like shape when it erupted. No words but 'woohoo'.

White Dome Geyser erupting, that's Shawni in the foreground

Late afternoon light frustrating the photographers, but what a sight.

The White Dome Geyser, gently puffing after its eruption.

Yellowstone National Park; meeting Old Faithful

Yellowstone National Park. 

When I was planning our USA adventure Yellowstone was one of the cornerstones of the trip and here we are.  The day arrived overcast, rain, cold, grey but I felt like waking up on a Christmas morning - anticipation! 

Mid July is peak season, the park feels like Sandton City on a saturday morning month end, nose to tail traffic, parking lots overflowing with buses, RV's and cars, traffic jams at a wild life sighting and lines of people.

Old Faithful was the first stop and despite the people and the weather what a thrill. The wait, watching the ever changing steam, then the first signs of the boiling water and at last the whoosh of the geyser. 

What a thrill and we got to do it twice.

View of the geyser mount from the Observation Point half a mile away

The thousands of people on the boardwalk seating waiting for Old Faithful to erupt

Old Faithful Geyser

Big Sky, Montana: Fox and a full moon

Settling into our last timeshare of the trip here in Big Sky, Montana after an epic 2 day cross country drive.

Two surprises, a resident fox ambled past and the beauty of the full moon rising from our veranda.

Good evening Montana and looking forward to fetching Shawni and Craig from Bozeman tomorrow and seeing what the week holds for us at Yellowstone National Park.

Our trip in numbers…

Joy of a summer berry.

We have been on the road for 10 weeks in the US.

•   travelled 8457 miles, (13610 km)

•   northern most point of the road trip, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, 47 degrees 41' N

•   southern most point of the road trip, Salton Sea, California, 33 degrees 31' N

•   been in 6 US states – California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho

•   explored 9 National Parks - Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Yosemite, Golden Gate Alcatraz, Lassen Volcanic, Redwoods. Lava Beds, Crater Lake

•   visited 7 State Parks - Big Sur, Salton Sea, San Jacinto Mountain, Hearst Castle, Red Rock, Red Rock Canyon, Humboldt Redwoods

•   National Forests; 6 Sequoia, Sierra, Tahoe, Lassen, Fremont Winema. Mt Hood

•   slept in 20 beds; 6 hotels/inns, 6 motels and 7 timeshare units, 1 private home (make it 26 with Bahamas)

•   ate Ben & Jerry ice-cream, 11, Cherry Garcia; Chunky Monkey; Triple Caramel Chunk; New York Super Fudge Chunk; Americone Dream; Cheesecake Brownie; Everything but the….; Coffee. Coffee Buzz Buzz!; FroYo, Half Baked; Pistachio, Pistachio; That’s my Jam Core

•   added 51 birds to my US bird list which is now 215 and my world list is 1498, top bird Roadrunner

•   popped into 5 museums, Palm Springs Art, Cable Car (SF), De Young (SF), Maritime Museum (Lake Tahoe), Latimer Quilt and Textile

•   farmers markets, 3; Oakhurst, Ferry Building (SF), Portland

•   decaprio 3 movie catch-up, Aviator, Gatsby and Departed

•   Oscar 6 movie catch-up, Dallas Buyers Club; Nebraska; August: Osage County; Zero Dark Thirty; Charlie Wilson’s War; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

•   relished organic extra virgin olive oil, 3 farms 

•   walked 187 miles; beaches, mountain trails, coastal meadow, high altitude lakes, golf courses, climbing red rocks, canyon rim, valley trail, desert paths, Las Vegas Strip, mountain hikes, many city blocks

•   walking well ahead of schedule, 18 miles credit, (for each 50 miles driven we want to walk 1 mile)

•   longest hike 10 miles on Four Mile Trail with 3200’ climb on steep switchbacks

•   took a bike, cycled along the Truckee River for 16 miles, (26 km)

•   canoed 9 miles along the Upper Klamath Canoe Trail

•   watched 7 episodes of Game of Thrones, season 4

•   lowest driving elevation, 214’ below sea-level at Furnace Creek Golf Course, Death Valley

•   highest driving elevation, 9945’ Tioga Pass, Tioga Road, Yosemite

•   got cold at the lowest temperature below 40 degrees F in Tehachapi (3 degrees C)

•   was hot at the highest temperature of 115 degrees F while walking in Death Valley (46 degrees C). Car registered 125 degrees F at one point – over 50 degrees C

•   wine tasting, 2 at Tablas Winery, Paso Robles and Souza Family Vineyard

•   modes of transport, 11, helicopter over the Grand Canyon, ferry to Alcatraz, cable car, bus, metro, streetcar, bicycle, paddle boat on Tahoe, canoe, Big Pink Trolley in Portland, ski-lift at Timberline, Mt Hood

•   shows/events, 5, in Las Vegas, O Cirque du Soleil; in San Francisco, Beach Blanket Babylon, SF Giants baseball in San Francisco; in Reno Extreme Bull Riding, in Reno, Rodeo

What is the chance of finding a tree with eyebrows!