History and Heat

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History & Heat

Yesterday we had a leisurely morning and left West Yellowstone for a van tour of the area west of the park. There was only one other couple in the 8-passenger van, which was nice. Laurie was our guide. He's lived in the area for many years, hiking, hunting and fishing all over, including in the high country. He showed us the area affected by the huge earthquake of 1959, which created a lake, caused a 20 foot shift in the shoreline, and caused 49 people to lose their lives. If we'd just driven by it, we'd have noticed the changes in the landscape, but probably not understood why they occurred. We next went to Virginia City, an old gold rush town. At the height of the boom, it had a population of over 35,000 people. It was fun looking at various artifacts from that time. Apparently at one time vigilantes were extremely powerful in the town, so there a "hanging barn" where they took the law into their own hands. We drove a little further to Nevada City. In that town there is a collection of buildings from that time period, including many complete with appropriate furniture and/or inventory. On the drive back to West Yellowstone we stopped at a guest ranch for dinner, and got back to the motel around 7:30 pm.

The painted buffaloes are entries in a charity art auction here in the town later on this month. Another interesting fact about today is that inside the park, the employees celebrate "Christmas in August" on this day, so there were decorations throughout the buildings.

Today we spent the day inside the park, and saw some amazing sights!!! Don't know about you, but we thought that was just the one main geyser, some hot springs, and colored mud pots. We saw at least 30 different geysers, several different cascades and waterfalls, some beautiful pools, and of course a bubbling mud pot. I guess I never realized the amount of heat contained beneath our feet! Our lunch was sandwiched between two eruptions of Old Faithful, and they were very different from each other, both in duration and intensity. Felt as if we were in a whole other world.

Tomorrow we're going to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which promises a different type of scenery than we saw today. Until tomorrow, Tom &Nancy

p.s. Tom loves huckleberry ice cream!

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Comments

[barb buikema]

never been there til now
this is wonderful !! looking forward to very day love barb

[Diana and Bill]

scrapbooking
You are doing all your scrapbooking as you go along! All you will need to do is print out each page and put it in a book!!