WESTERN JOURNEY--SEPTEMBER, 2011--DAY 5

Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks
West Yellowstone, Montana to Afton, Wyoming
September 11, 2011

After spending one night in West Yellowstone, just outside the western entrance to the park, we had breakfast in a very "western" restaurant. The walls were adorned with heads and hides of many of the animals one could find in the park. The gigantic bear in the restaurant was overwhelming to us!

Though Yellowstone's mountains, forests and meadows are overwhelmingly beautiful, Yellowstone also has the largest concentration of geysers, hot springs, and mud pools in the world. As we drove through Yellowstone and then walked along the wooden walkways, we photographed numerous examples of these geothermal features.

The park sits on top of one of the largest active volcanoes in the world! The caldera of this volcano, which last erupted 640,000 years ago, is 47 miles long and 28 miles wide. Driving along the roads in the park, we saw signs telling us when we entered or left the caldera.

Celestine Pool (below)

Fountain Paint Pot (below)

The vat of bubbling mud creates the perfect mix to create paint pots: heat, gases, water and volcanic rock, minerals, acids and even living microorganisms.

Clepsydra Geyser (below)

We continued to explore the Lower Geyser Basin, which contains nearly one hundred geothermal features.  

 



White Dome Geyser

Having lunch on this warm and sunny day on the balcony at the Old Faithful Inn, was a great way to spend part of our last day in the park.

Today was the 10th Anniversary of 9/11/01, so all of the flags were at half mast.

Although we had seen one eruption of Old Faithful a few days before, we managed to arrive in time to experience it once more.

Yellowstone Lake (below) is the largest high elevation lake in North America. The lake is so large that it can even create its own weather. On the opposite side of the lake, is a lightning-caused fire of about 1000 acres that is being managed by firefighters. It has been burning for about two weeks now and has not posed a threat to visitors at this time.

More scenic wonders continued to be seen as we drove through Yellowstone on our last day.

Driving south from Yellowstone, we were glad to have one last time to view the Grand Teton Mountains. It was in the early evening light with new fallen snow on the mountain peaks. Oh, yes, there was one lonely elk close enough to the road for a photo.

The very most exciting event of our entire trip was coming upon a huge herd of bison alongside the road. There were literally hundreds of these animals, and we stopped, along with several other cars to photograph them. The American bison is the largest land mammal in North America.

In 1872, millions of bison still darkened the Great Plains. Within thirty years Yellowstone would become a refuge for the last surviving wild bison in America.

As they came closer to the road, we were worried that one might start across the road and the rest of the herd might follow for many hours. It began to happen, and Judy decided that we could not stay there on the road overnight, so she took one last photo and zoomed through the bison crossing the road--a daring move! We heard that bison are some of the most fearsome animals in the park and are able to run at 30 miles an hour!

Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks are not large enough for the bison, which when snow lies deep in the high country, migrate out of the park to their ancient wintering grounds and into a conflict with ranchers.