Day 13 - Continued
We then drove on, stopping at the Grand Prismatic spring. This
is the one that looks like a rainbow from above, though it's
a bit harder to make out from the ground:
It was enjoyable standing in front of the spring; as the wind blew
you got alternating blasts of hot and cold air
(Unlike the last time we were here, it
was the cold air that felt nice).
We next went to the Norris Geyser Basin, a location Kristina and I
had not gotten to see last time. Here is Steamboat Geyser, the
largest in the world. Unfortunately its period ranges from days
to decades. Its last eruption happened to be right around when
Kristina and I were last here, but we didn't see it!
The area nearby is known as the Porcelain Basin:
While here it started to rain, luckily not too heavily.
We continued on to the north. So far we had not seen any Bison. Last
time we were here they were everywhere, and Kristina's family
was dissapointed that none were to be found. We did eventually
finally see one:
We drove North, past Obsidian Cliff. We decided not to go see
the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone this time. We finally got to
Mammoth Hot Springs (My favorite area
of the park):
The spring has been very active recently. Here you can see a neat
channel zipping by, and you can see the thin layer of deposited minerals
floating in sheets in the little pools:
The spring has been so active that it overtook part of the trail; you
can see where the old trail was in the background. For an idea
of how fast this has happened, a little over a year before Kristina
and I took that trail with no problem.
Unfortunately it was getting late, and sadly we had to leave.
We drove out the north entrance of the park, not taking
the "short cut" of US 212 whose 11,000 foot high pass
looks like a plate of spaghetti on the map. We crossed the 45th parallel
and entereed Montana.
--- Entering Montana ---
Near Gardiner Montana is a big rock formation called the Devil's Slide
(are we noticing a naming theme?).
It looks more like a big slice of bacon to me:
We stopped for the evening in Livingston Montana, at a motel that
looked like it had been preserved unchanged from the 1960s.
Here is our room:
--- Ending in Livingston, Montana ---
Continue on to Day 14