Steamy Holes and Bear Jams

The title of this post basically sums up Yellowstone National Park.

Steamy Hole

No, its not hot lava... only thermophile (heat loving) bacteria.

After going hard on the backcountry and intense activities for quite a while, it was time to chill out a little bit. This was the plan for Yellowstone; to do the tourist thing and drive around and take pictures of cool stuff. At one point we had considered doing some backpacking here too, but then we heard that a couple weeks before a whole herd of Bison fled the park. Why? They may know something we do not. Then a couple days before arriving, one of the roads melted... So in lieu of all this, we did our thing and drove right into the caldera of one of the worlds largest volcanoes. Historically it blew 2 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and 640,000 years ago. So I figured we are right on schedule +/- 100,000 years. These odds were good enough for me.

Terraces

We spent one day driving around, fighting the tour buses (this place is almost as crowded as Yosemite, but fortunately taken down one notch of crazy people), doing all sorts of short walks to interesting geothermal sites. Yellowstone is full of bubbling pits of mud, geysers, interestingly colored pools and terraces and of course, Old Faithful. I think my favorite sign of the trip was at one mud pit that the boardwalk takes you fairly close to, "Caution: Hot Flying Mud". And the walkway in fact did have mud on it.

That night we wandered to the National Forest just north of the park where it was way easier to find open cheap camping. The following day, we drove down the other side of the park where there is less geothermal activity. This part of the park was very beautiful in its own way, and would probably be best characterized by the term "bear jam".

A righteous bear jam (we certainly added to the problem...)

There were many bison around.

It generally starts with one car noticing some wildlife on the side of the road (and being that this is a national park and they are all protected, there is quite a bit). Then other people driving by sees a couple people actually OUT of their car in a random spot, so they slow down or stop to see what the other people see. Then before you know it, people are parked all over the place and there is a huge line of traffic. It is quite comical. But at least you do get to see quite a bit of wildlife. Here we saw many bison (they look docile, but are HUGE), elk, moose and bears.

The non-geothermal part of Yellowstone. Always more wildflowers!