Vince's Trans-continental Trip
21 May 2005 - Saturday
We slept in a bit this day, which turned out to be OK since the East gate
of Yellowstone didn't open until 8am due to construction.
0 Miles - Left Cody, Wyoming
We drove in toward Yellowstone.
There are towering cliffs and a cool stream along the way, and suddenly you
go through a neat tunnel and the stream is dammed up to form the
Buffalo Bill Reservoir
We got to the park entrance right at 8am and had to wait in a short line to
get in. The ranger said in an ominous voice "Here's your info and here's
the construction map of doom." [no, really, he did say that].
And scary it was. They are reconstructing the Eastern entrance to the park,
so Kristina had to drive up a mountain along an under-construction gravel
road with a steep drop on one side. But eventually we crested the caldera
and entered the core of the park.
Suddenly we realized how cold it was. It was in the 40s. There were
piles of snow around, ice on the major lakes, and some of the major roads
had just opened recently (and some were still closed due to snow).
Here is a picture of our first view of Yellowstone Lake:
We started driving around the lower loop road, and the first site
of interest was the West Thumb Geyser Basin. Quite a remarkable site,
with lots of geysers, hot springs, paint pots (which are bubbling pools
of mud) and other geothermal features. Hot steam was obscuring the view
in many places, and the rotten-egg smell of Hydrogen Sulfide was ever-present.
Here is an overview of what the area looked like. The two pyramid shaped
things are inactive geysers (I think):
Here is an example hot spring. They all have names, but unfortunately I
didn't keep good track of which were which. The springs are often mere
feet from each other, yet will be of vastly different color and size.
They were all obscured by steam, which had obvious negative impact
on the pictures I took.
The thermal features continue out into Lake Yellowstone; the brochure we
were given says it even continues out on the bottom of the lake.
Here are two geysers right on the shore:
Some of the hot springs have amazing colors, like this blue one:
There were many many more springs in this area, but we had to move on.
So we continued on the loop, crossing the continental divide twice
before we got to the next stop. Here is one of the times:
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