Vince's Trans-continental Trip
21 May 2005 - Saturday (Continued)
There were even more geysers and springs in the immediate area,
just down the road a bit. We stopped at all of the ones we could.
Here is a little geyser really going to town at the Upper Geyser Basin:
Here is my favorite hot spring of all, Sapphire Pool. Such an amazing
color:
One of the more famous sights at Yellowstone is the Grand Prismatic Spring.
It's a huge pool, and it is rainbow colored. You'll often see this
on postcards and puzzles and such. The colors are due (if I understand
things right) to different types of bacteria being able to stand different
amounts of heat.
Typically the view of this is a nice aerial one. Unfortunately from the
ground you get a foreshortened steam-shrouded view. Oddly, though, the
steam took on the color of the water below, which made for a pretty sight:
Now we've progressed to the Lower Geyser basin. Here are some paintpots,
boiling bowls of mud.
We then drove back a narrow side-road to see Firehole Falls. In the summer
you can swim near the falls.
By now we are halfway around the lower loop. Kristina's initial plan was to
do both the upper and lower loops, but half of the upper loop was still
closed due to snow. So instead we just headed up the left leg of the upper
loop.
We stopped at Gibbons Falls:
Then proceeded north. We passed Obsidian Cliff, which has giant deposits of
Obsidian [which you are banned from collecting]. We continued on until
we got to Mammoth Hot Springs.
At this point we were tantalizingly close to Montana. [As it was said,
"I would like to have seen Montana"].
So we drove a few extra miles out of our way, and:
179 Miles - Arrived Montana
Yes, this is cheating....
179.1 Miles - Returned to Wyoming
The Montana-Wyoming border is right near the 45th parallel...
And after our little detour we made the poor car climb back up the cliff to
return to Yellowstone proper.
In Mammoth Hot Springs is historic
Fort Yellowstone,
an Army base that protected the area before it became a park.
Also there are some really neat mineral formations.
Here is the giant remains of an old geyser:
We got out and walked along the Lower Terrace, where mineral-laden water
overflows from pools and creates some impressive formations:
When the water stops flowing, this is what you
are left with:
We then drove to the top of the terrace, and you can get close to many
more formations, both current and dried up:
It was a lot of fun exploring this area, but believe it or not there is
still more to see!
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