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Well we arrived at the much coveted Yellowstone and it has a long history as it was the first of all the National Parks. The real history, however is its’ geological one in that Yellowstone blew its’ proverbial top about 16.5 million years ago releasing untold bits of stuff into the atmosphere. After that initial explosion Yellowstone has gone off another 100 times since. But the last 3 times is what gets all the ink. It is a bit of interesting history that no one could actually find the crater until the 60′s. It was not that it was so hard to find as it was just so incredibly large that nobody could get their geological brains around it. It is huge. 47 miles by 28 miles. The most recent eruption was 640,000 years ago and it is estimated to have been 1,000 times greater than Mt. Saint Helens, which usually defines a volcanic catastrophe these days. The cycles of eruption are on average every 600,000 years so it is long overdue for the next big, and I mean big, blow. Anyway, what was left behind, even after all those years, is truly a spectacle. The earths crust and the pleasantries we generally associate with it for providing (you know…stuff like top soil, trees, shade, food sources and water) are completely removed exposing, as Sabine put it, one huge festering sore on the earth. There is stuff spewing and spitting and gurgling everywhere you look. You think the hot springs in Ojai have a funk, well the stuff that is regurgitated out of the earth here has the distinct smell (and ph balance for that matter) of battery acid. Not exactly where you want to soak your tired butt.
There are amazing sights of Thermophiles, which is a fancy name given to those microorganisms that not only thrive, but make entire communities in extremely hot water. They are quite colorful and fascinating in that they can live in the boiling water that comes right out of the geysers. Despite their extremely colorful appearance and the fact that they are in plain sight all over Yellowstone they were only examined for life and given a name in 1965. There is only one type of microorganism that can out perform the Thermophiles and that is Hyperthermophiles (a name so new that my spell check doesn’t even recognize the word) which live inside the walls of ocean vents at the temperature of 240 degrees F (120 C) and good luck getting a view of them.
We also met some geyser gazers. They are an interesting bunch of people that spend their hours just waiting around for geysers to blow meanwhile taking copious notes on the nature of the eruption, or near eruption as is more common. Marianne had a whole notebook chock full of notes when she whispered almost inaudibly about a “stage two delay” while we were awaiting the Grand Geyser to blow. Amazingly, she had it exact when she said the next cycle was a positive loop and she predicted it within 30 seconds. Apparently that is no easy task. Everyone has heard about old faithful, but that is just about the only geyser, of the more than 300 in Yellowstone, that one can safely predict. By the way there are only 500 geysers in the entire world, so 300 in this area is quite extraordinary.
The animals, for their part, have found the geysers that are everywhere provide a pretty nifty warming spot in the otherwise inhospitable winters in Yellowstone. Animals are everywhere. We had plenty of sightings and we began to feel as if we were on some kind of wild goose chase every morning that we woke up. What was it gonna be today? At the end of the day we had trouble recounting all the wildlife we had seen. We even got stuck in a “Bison jam”.
Despite what seemed to us a clear and common theme here in the U.S. the ridiculous amount of Rangers in the park becomes quite nauseating. Interestingly there was a clear lack of enforcement in the campgrounds with generators roaring at all hours despite the regulations. Generators, quite literally are unheard of in Canada. Never did we hear one in five weeks camping in Canada. I have been known to sport my ranger hat and enforce the quiet hours all the while having them believe that I am the ranger. It’s amazing how quickly they comply.
The Tetons just pick up where Yellowstone leaves off. Autumn suddenly appeared out of nowhere and we were at once surrounded by the yellows reds and cremes of fall. It was gorgeous…and cold. Overall Sabine and feel if there is one National Park that you don’t want to miss, especially if you enjoy wildlife viewing, it would be this area. Just don’t come in the Summer, it’s the Walmart of National Parks.
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Very interesting post … just a historical note … Yellowstone was not visited by Lewis and Clark. The first Euroamerican visitor (there were indigenous Indians living in the park up until the time it was declared a national park when they were no longer welcome) was a man who was with Lewis named John Colter. He came back through the area in 1807, though it wasn’t officially “discovered” until the expeditions of the early 1870s.
Comment by Jim Macdonald October 10, 2008 @ 3:56 pm