Aron and Arthur went to breakfast in the Lodge at Lake Village. Martha stayed at the cabin to work on photos. At 8:15am the guys came back and we all took off for the Geyser Walk near Old Faithful. On the way we saw some animals, stopped to admire Yellowstone Lake, and checked out the Kepler Cascades. We also crossed the continental divide there twice at about 8,000 feet.
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Yellowstone Park: Yellowstone river
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Yellowstone Park: Continental Divide
Dear Journal,
Today we woke up and went to a geyser walk where I learned how geysers work and how different colors of bacteria grow in different temperatures of runoff. We got to see 3 geysers, 2 of them giant, all at once!!! One sprayed me, which is supposedly good luck! Then we had lunch and went to a place with some thermal lakes, and I found a tiny geyser under the boardwalk! After that, I got my Junior Ranger badge and we hiked up to a lake of sulfuric acid! Then we had dinner, packed up, played dominoes (I won), and went to sleep.
Aron
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Yellowstone Park: lily pond at the Continental Divide
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Yellowstone Park: Kepler Cascades
We made it to the Old Faithful area around 9:15am, which gave us 45 min to walk to Crater Geyser, where the Geyser walk was going to start. Our ranger, Rebecca, was grand, and explained all of the plumbing of the geysers, about the cyanobacteria and how the different colors in areas of the pools are from the different bacteria that can live at different temperatures and so the colors indicate the temperature zones: white for hottest, then blue, then yellow, then orange, then brown. She also told us of some accidents at the park when children or adults stumbled into the hot pools and died. She also explained the different kinds of calcite rocks: a porous one that forms in bacteria rich areas, and a more dense one that is deposited in geyser eruptions. She said that 70% of Yellowstone Park was an immense caldera. It is sitting over a hot spot (like the one that formed the Hawaiian islands) that has stayed fixed while the North continental Plate has been moving southwest, so the hot spot on the surface seems to be moving northeast. It is now under Mammoth Hot Springs after having left the area under Old Faithful. She urged us to wait patiently until Turban Geyser blows (every twenty minutes), because it relieves the surface pressure near Grand Geyser just enough to cause it to erupt as well, so we might witness that eruption as well. Grand Geyser is a fountain geyser that lasts a good 15 minutes of successive blowings, followed by a few minutes of steam blowing.
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Yellowstone Park: Old Faithful steaming
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: Castle Geyser
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park:
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: bison hoofprints
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park:
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: bison hoofprints
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: The colors come from different microorganisms that live at different temperatures.
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park:
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park:
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park:
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: Belgian Spring
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: dragonfly entombed in Belgian Spring
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: Beauty Pool
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: Riverside Geyser
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: Geyser
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: Grand Geyser erupts
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park:
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: Castle Geyser erupts
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park: Castle Geyser erupts
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geyser walk, Yellowstone Park:
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Yellowstone Park:
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Yellowstone Park:
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Yellowstone Park: Arthur Luehrmann and Aron Cowen
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Yellowstone Park: clear hot pool
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Yellowstone Park:
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Yellowstone Park: Arthur Luehrmann
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Yellowstone Park:
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Yellowstone Park:
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Yellowstone Park:
We then walked over to Old Faithful, but it would not be blowing again for 92 minutes since it just blew, so we went inside to have lunch at the Old Faithful lodge cafeteria. Unfortunately, we just missed the next Old Faithful, and since Aron needed a self-guided tour to finish his junior ranger badge, we went to Black Sand Basin where we saw the Cliff Geyser, Emerald Pool, Rainbow Pool, and Sunset Lake, along with tiny Opalescent Pool and numerous tiny geysers, two of the right under the boardwalk where we were walking!
Back to the Old Faithful visitor's center so Aron could get his badge. Then we drove back towards Canyon Village, past Lake Village, up to the Mud Volcano area. We saw Mud Volcano, Dragon's Mouth Spring, Mud Geyser, and Cooking Hillside. Aron went even further than Arthur and I wanted to go, so he also saw Sizzling Basin, Churning Cauldron, Black Dragon's Cauldron, Sour Lake (sulphuric acid!), and Grizzly Fumarole.
We all also saw “Parking Lot Pool” where smoke was seen coming out of the parking lot area in 1999. Park Rangers removed the asphalt from that section and discovered a new mud pool.
Cooking hillside is interesting. Apparently there was a swarm of earthquakes in the area in 1978-1979. Soil temperatures on the hillside soared to 200ºF (94ºC), cooked the roots and killed the trees.
Drove back to Lake Village and ate dinner at the cafeteria. It was pretty late, but we packed up for the morning, played a game of dominoes (Aron won big time - I got twice as many points against me as he did, and Arthur got 3 times as many points against him as Aron did), and then went to bed early. We have a big drive tomorrow through Lemhi Pass!
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Yellowstone Park: Emerald Pool
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Yellowstone Park: Aron Cowen at Emerald Pool
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Yellowstone Park:
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Yellowstone Park: Aron Cowen and Arthur Luehrmann at Cliff Geyser
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Yellowstone Park: Kepler Cascades
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Yellowstone Park: buffalo
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Yellowstone Park: buffalo
horses
Yellowstone Park: horses