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Published: February 18th 2012
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During breakfast at the budget hotel, we met one of the staff who happen to be Filipino as well.
Kabayan!It's remarkable where we Filipinos find ourselves these days – we adapt even in the remotest places!
Fact: Yellowstone is the first National Park park in the world.
Like A Moving Painting It probably took a good hour and a half's drive from the border of Montana to the heart of the Yellowstone National Park where we saw our first canyon in the park. Starting from the roaring waterfalls called the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River, we continued on to another lookout point called the Artist point to see the picturesque
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. But unlike any other waterfall or canyons I have seen before, this stands out for being the only hydrothermally active I have ever seen. It could be the only one I could ever see in my lifetime for all I know!
The 20-mile river beginning at the falls we saw earlier is now hidden from view. What sits in the middle of what, to me, looks like a moving painting is now the Lower
Falls standing 300 feet, three times larger than the first one. The hues of red, orange, yellow, and rust blend and contrast in striking detail. I can imagine how more saturated these colors would look like in the summer. But since it's May and snow still envelopes most of the canyon, this “painting” asserts a certain mysterious allure that is hard to explain – no wonder this is called the Artist Point. As yes, as one must have already guessed, what created these colors of the canyon all begins from the magma a few miles below us at Yellowstone. The thermal activity caused the little geysers that hydrothermally altered a rock type called rhyolite. Hey, these geysers make good painters, eh? All they need is the scalding heat from molten rock from the core of the earth and time – about several thousands of years. As I took in this scene, snow continues to fall from the sky, … making the view all the more romantic.
Like Being in Another Planet We've logged another 35 miles in our odometer. We have arrived at the
Mammoth Hot Springs which is conveniently surrounded by the modern conveniences of
a hotel, restaurants, souvenir shops, and even a gas station! I did not know what to expect as I have never heard of Mammoth Hot Springs before, but we saw cones of rocks sprung out by the road side.
This turns out to be a series of terraces of hot springs. I grew up in a country where hot springs means hot water pools where we go swimming for fun and pleasure. But here in Yellowstone, a hot spring is nothing close to fun. In fact, it looks barren, sad, and deserted. One particular terrace had tree trunks that look dead, unhappily standing amidst a white lifeless limestone bed. I feel like being in another planet, Venus perhaps?
These hot springs could have evolved from being filled with water to having been dried up after hundreds of years. I slowly understand that these hot springs, much like the Grand Prismatic Spring, is a hotbed of life form. Thermophiles are yet again the star of this theory. Thermophiles, which means heat-loving microorganisms, created the orange, yellow, brown, white, and green colors of the terraces. The terraces are like living sculptures, shaped by the geysers, the
volume of water, and the weather. Rock forms before my very eyes!
As we walked by a certain part of the terraces, the usual cloud of steam seemed unimportant due to some offending scent. I'm sure it wasn't me! I am also sure that the scent was offending for a good reason. These gases of hydrogen sulfide and cardon dioxide are toxic, and here are Yellowstone, they have lots of it.
I Missed Out on Something Big We've spent almost 2 days in Yellowstone but I strongly feel we have barely scratched the surface of what Yellowstone is about. I know because, as I write this, I have watched several documentaries that highlight the wildlife, the flora, and fauna of Yellowstone. Although I've experienced the geologic side of the park, it leaves me much more to look forward to. Maybe someday I could walk the trails in the summer, do some birdwatching in the flower meadows, or camp in some lake where I can watch otters and deers. Yellowstone is a special sanctuary for bears, wolves, elks, hummingbirds, nutcrackers, cayotes, rabbits, and foxes. And I would love to sit by and watch them
all. In reality, I would never experience Yellowstone that way. Perhaps that's a good thing. It keeps them undisturbed by humans. It keeps them truly wild.
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