Yellowstone

From the posts that I have written here, you may have the impression that I travel only to Mexico and Europe.  In fact, I have traveled fairly extensively within the United States.  In the summer of 2007, a friend and I took a lengthy road trip from Ohio all the way to the Pacific coast of Washington.  One of the places that we visited along the way was Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone was established as a national park in 1872, and was the first national park in the world.  It is located in the northwestern corner of Wyoming, with small portions of parkland crossing the borders into Montana and Idaho.  Much of the park is within the Yellowstone Caldera, the remains of an enormous super-volcano.  The last major eruption of this volcano occurred 640,000 years ago with a force 1000 times greater than the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens.  Smaller eruptions have occurred since then... the most recent was 164,000 years ago.  It is still considered an active volcano, and the magma dome is what has created the geothermal features for which the park is so famous.  There are steam vents, hot springs, mud pots, and, of course, geysers.  Yellowstone contains two thirds of all the geysers in the world.

At Mammoth Hot Springs you can see terraces formed by calcium carbonate deposited as the hot water cools at the surface.

  

Scenery along the Upper Loop Road

 

 

 

Not far from the Upper Loop Road is a lookout for Tower Fall.  This waterfall is 132 feet high, and is near the confluence of Tower Creek and the Yellowstone River. 

 

 

 

 

The road continues on to lookouts where you can see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  The canyon, which is 1000 feet deep, is carved by the Yellowstone River.  The yellowish shade of the rocks is due to the presence of iron ore.

 

 

 

 

The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone drop 308 feet into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  That is twice the height of Niagara Falls.

 

 

 

 

The hottest geothermal area in the park is the Norris Geyser Basin.  The bizarre landscape is dotted with geysers, large and small, and hot springs.  The tallest geyser in the park, Steamboat Geyser, is here.  We did not see it erupt since its eruptions are infrequent.  The longest period of time that passed between eruptions was fifty years!

 

 



 

The Golden Gate Canyon... the road passing through the canyon was a major engineering feat.

 

 

 

 

Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in North America.

 

 

 

 

Of course, no visit to Yellowstone would be complete without seeing Old Faithful, the most famous geyser in the world.  Its eruptions are no longer as regular as they used to be, but it generally erupts every ninety minutes.