Yellowstone - Cracks in the Earth

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WARNING: Not too many Pictures in this blog!
This is indeed a treat—not having to pack the truck in the morning and spending more than one night in the same place! This meant that theoretically we could get up and get going earlier… Hmm, Sometimes sleeping in does feel really good!
P.s. The photo left is proof for Maria’s Dad - he commented that he thought we were holed up in some resort somewhere surfing the internet for cool pictures. We wish our muscles felt that way!

Statistics

Starting Destination: West Yellowstone, Montana
Ending Destination: West Yellowstone, Montana
Ending Destination GPS: N: 44° 39.348’ W: 111° 06.390’ Elev: 6704’
Miles Driven: 135.6
Miles Hiked: 5.5
Feet Decended: 1600
Cumulative crossings of the Continental Divide: 6

The South Loop - Part One: A big Crack

Today our first stop was the new visitor’s center. It has only been open one month and is very cool - There were discussions about how many of the features in the park were formed, about the flora and fauna and about the history. For those of you who don’t know about the geologic history of Yellowstone—and Maria was one of those—most of the park is located on a geologic “hot spot,” that is an area of volcanic activity that is not associated with specific tectonic plate movements. The “volcano” that the park is located upon erupted at least 3 times a long-long-time-ago and the craters form Yellowstone Lake and some of the other features. The hot springs, mudpots, geysers and fumeroles etc. are created because of the volcanic activity and the number of earthquakes that occur in the region.. Ok, ok, this ends the geology lesson!
From the visitors center we drove down the road to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (River)… There are actually two sets of falls—the upper and the lower and each have several viewing points. We decided that we needed to view the falls from as many of these viewing points as possible. We did find that the more difficult the viewing spot was to get too, the more appealing it was. I guess, it is hard to feel like you are in the middle of nowhere communing with Nature when there are lots of other people doing exactly the same thing! That is why there are numerous “day hikes” that one can do—we found a particularly interesting one that would take you down into the canyon to the river, we just didn’t have a spare 8-10 hours!! About half way through our marathon viewing effort we decided to have lunch—we had packed sandwiches—but in our hurry to get going we forgot and left it on the table in the cabin. We scrounged around and found Cherry Ripes in the truck, Cliff Bars and some other sort of apricot almond bar in the bike bag—these sufficed. Although Carl was happier than Maria, there was more sugar in this lunch than our “normal” lunch!

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The South Loop - Part Two: Lots of Little Cracks

Now that you know all about the geologic history of Yellowstone you know that all the “features” are just little cracks with different characteristics. We continued on our journey along the South Loop within the park, first to Fishing Bridge via the Sulphur Cauldron and Mud Volcano. We think we saw some Trumpeter Swans along the way, however, they was a lot of distance between us and them—even with the BIG lens on the camera they just show up as white “blobs!” Next we followed the Western edge of Yellowstone Lake towards West Thumb where there were more hot springs, mudpots and other features.
We did take a detour as part of this circuit—out to Gull Point, we followed a one-way track in the car, then stopped and walked out to the “beach.” Maria found the sand very interesting as it appeared to have lots of little pieces of obsidian mixed with the other volcanic rock - perhaps that is why some of the roads look that way too? When we reached West Thumb we followed the boardwalk path past lots of the different pools, interestingly one was called the ‘Ephedra Spring,” although we didn’t notice that it needed to loose weight! Our next stop was the Continental Divide—the road crosses the divide twice within about 8 miles along this road. Unfortunately, our streak has ended—we didn’t bring lunch so we couldn’t eat it on the divide! Besides that it was after 5pm and probably would have qualified as dinner! At the second crossing there was this very interesting lake—it actually sits over the divide and drains both ways - to the Pacific and to the Atlantic. However, after all the volcanic activity it wasn’t much to look at!!

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The South Loop - Part Three: Whoosh

Last but not least we stopped at Old Faithful - it appears that the Park Rangers have some success in predicting when the geyser will blow next… Tonight it was 6:37pm… we arrived somewhere around 6:20pm and found the best picture taking location—Carl had it all mapped out… With the sun lowering in the sky and a few clouds in the background the picture would contain the yellow of the grass the green trees the blue sky and the setting sun would light up the plume of water and steam from the geyser… Oh, the best laid plans - the geyser didn’t cooperate and it was nearly 6:50 before it went off… highlighting only the top of the plume. By this time it was getting dark so we started driving back to the cabin—with only one stop at a brown blob jam, and one stop to take a picture of the moon (left).

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Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer: 2,221,766 acres or 899,116.8 hectares
Today’s Question: What is the height of the lower falls of the Yellowstone River?

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Comments

[Marv Bush]

Trivia height of lower falls at yellowstone
The height of the lower falls is 308'. MB