Mile 3863 - Yellowstone Visitors Center

If you haven't been to Yellowstone, you should go, because it is one of the beautiful ways to feel like the end is nigh. That's right, I'm talking apocalypto.

Now you may not believe our claims of this impending doom. The first white man to see Yellowstone tried to tell everyone what he saw and no one believed him! In 1807, John Colter, described it as "hidden fires, smoking pits, noxious steams, and smell of brimstone". Everyone thought he was making it up because it sounded too crazy.

What is crazy is that Yellowstone is a giant volcano! The tourists come to enjoy a beautiful flat land to get a close up look at many geothermal phenomenon. What you learn in the process is that all of this activity is due to the fact that you're standing directly above a magma chamber the size of the Yellowstone area. Kinda scary if you start thinking about it. Consider this picture, stolen off of National Geographic's website, and similar to what we saw in the visitors centers.  Notice the size of yellowstone and the two magma chambers. right under foot. Makes you want to get as far away as you can, like the French Southern and Antartic lands, which is an island on the opposite side of the earth.

Now they did reassure us that there is no imminent threat. For anything drastic to occur, there would be warning signs of violent earthquakes and weeks of slow oozing lava. But, if it did happen to erupt it has the potential to spew enough ash and poisonous gases into the atmosphere to temporarily block out the sun and start an ice age.

Now clearly, we're no geologists, but we were in awe. The earth is such a dynamic place and it's pretty cool to get to live in a time when all of this knowledge is so accessible. It should be noted that National Parks are such great places to learn! Most of them have interactive displays now with audio tours that you can download right onto your iPhone. And I won't tell you how many Parks we've been to thus far, but I will say we've far surpassed the $80 we spent on our National Parks pass. So worth it.

Bison, WY

So we just have to share our experience with the Bison in Yellowstone.  We discovered that for some people in the mid-west, seeing a Bison brings the same feeling as when we Californians come across a raccoon.  But for us, we LOVED watching the Bison and were SO excited every time we found some!  We drove less than 100 yards into the park and were met by this fellow...

|

This was just a small taste of what was to come.  We had heard of the "Bear Jam" that can occur in Yellowstone when somebody spots a bear near the road and stops to take a closer look. We unfortunately never got to start a bear jam, but were able to be a part of many Bison Jams! If only the commute home on the 580 was something so enjoyable. The Jams sometimes allowed for enough time to exit the truck and take a closer look, which you can see we were stoked to do!  

The second coolest job in Yellowstone, after the Geyeserologist, would have to be the Bison Herder.  They know where the herds are going at certain times of day and when it's time for the herd to cross the road, they sometimes have to use their large truck to encourage them along.  At times the feisty males would get territorial and put up a bit of a fight. But in the end, size does matter.

And especially for Roro, a Bison taking a bath.  He was still dirty when he was all done, but covering himself in dirt gets rid any bugs that are bugging him.

Mile 3852 - Yellowstone Grand Prismatic Area, WY

Since Sarah bought this amazing book back in college, she has been awed by its cover photo and wondered where in the world is this colorful place?!?!.  

Well, check it out: it's right here in Yellowstone, so we obviously weren't going to miss it! We were both really excited to stare into the depths of the prismatic spring. So we saw it…though the book was on to something when it took the picture from the air; from the ground, you really can’t appreciate the colors because you can hardly see them. If you look at the picture you can see that the 150 plus degree water has created a nice puffy cloud. So those clouds might look cute and all, but when it blows right over you, it's like you're in a sauna that smells like sulfur. Not so great...

Now we should mention that it's still worthwhile to see, because it's huge. Look in the bottom right hand corner of the top picture and you can see the walking path. It's about 6 feet wide, which makes it about 30 feet from the edge of the pool. We know we're acting all gripy because we didn't get to see the colors, but if we were any closer, we'd be steaming like broccoli. It was amazing, but we recommend bringing your helicopter and wide angle lens. 

Nerdy note: the vibrant colors you see come from the varieties of bacteria that grow in these springs. Microbes that live in such hot water are called thermophiles and there are some that enjoy highly acidic environments called acidophiles. The yellow and orange   microbes in the pool give a clue to the temperature of the water since they grow in 170 degree water. The blue in the middle of the pool is where the water is really deep.  The discovery of these rare organisms, "Thermus aquaticus" led to all sorts of discoveries including PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), which allowed for faster sequencing of the human genome. If you've got some time to kill, check out this link.

 

Mile 3823 - Yellowstone Geyser Area, WY

Glacier was beautiful, but our next destination was the grand daddy of all the national parks: Yellowstone. A fact you might want to remember the next time you're playing trivial pursuit is that Yellowstone was the very first ever National Park established and it was because of President Theodore Roosevelt. The Saaron had never been to Yellowstone, but we have heard good things.

We started by going to see Old Faithful; we felt that with all his faithfulness, he deserved to be the priority. We were not alone in this thinking, we found a few hundred others waiting in anticipation.

We discovered the best job in the National Park system: the geyser predictor. There’s a master control station in the visitor center where rangers all over the park are radioing in the times of geyser eruptions and the specially trained geyserologists use their geyser knowledge to predict the next eruption. This info is posted on all sorts of tourist boards throughout the park so not only can you plan your time to see Old Faithful, but also Grand, Daisy and Castle among others. We strolled out of the visitors center three minutes before the prediction and then, right on cue, geyser!  

Before entering the park, we found these awesome free video podcasts on iTunes to help decide what we wanted to see. One video was about the eruption of Giant Geyser and how spectacular it is. It has erupted over 250 ft tall for lengths of an hour! We learned only the lucky or the dedicated get to see it's greatness, as it's eruptions are totally unpredictable. We discussed bringing a book there and just hanging out for the day in hopes of experiencing the great Giant, but were glad we didn’t when we discovered it last erupted in 2008. I guess our video was slightly dated. 

Most of us think of Old Faithful when we think of geysers, but really it's quite abnormal in the geyser world. A geyser goes off because there are super-heated pockets of water underground that finds its way up through weak fissures in the rock. These fissures are continuously changing so most geysers go through periods of high activity and then become irregular or inactive. Even a small earthquake could turn a consistent geyser into a dry hole in the ground. This makes Old Faithful even more impressive as he has been erupting every 45-95 minutes since first recorded in 1870, and who knows how long before that!

Near Old Faithful is a very informative visitor center with the always helpful rangers, as well as a crazy big hotel and lodge for those who wish to watch the eruptions in their PJs. While we did have our PJs on hand, we were planning on getting away from the crowds and heading into Yellowstone's back country. At the visitor center we learned that if you hike off the beaten path, or boardwalk in the case of Yellowstone, you might fall through a thin crust of earth into a hot 500 degree hot spring and die.  Apparently they lose a few hikers each year. While this was a tempting dare, we discovered that most of the must see sites in Yellowstone have boardwalks built around them to keep you from actually stepping foot on the earth. And since neither of us had been to Yellowstone before to have any idea of its grand size, we realized that we could "boardwalk" for 5 days and still not see everything.

So fear not mothers, we survived without falling into a hot spring, but have promised to return to see the lesser viewed areas of Yellowstone someday soon.