Our day 9 adventure brought us back through the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park (YNP) from Wapiti to explore Old Faithful and other geysers in this thermal area. More to follow, but first a short geology lesson: The geology of Yellowstone is fascinating at so many levels it's not possible to capture this history in a blog. But a couple facts that we picked up on is that many locations around the world like New Zealand and Iceland are well known for their geysers, but nowhere are there as many as in Yellowstone. Additionally, three major volcanic events happened during the history of this area. The first one was 2 million years ago, then 1.3 million years ago, and the last known event was only 640,000 years ago. In geology time that is like a snap of your fingers. This last event spewed over 640 cubic miles of debris and the inward collapse of the volcano formed a 30- by 40-mile caldera. In comparison, the Mount St. Helen's volcano eruption in May, 1980 spewed only 0.67 miles of debris and the caldera left behind was 1.2- by 1.8 miles. It's hard to imagine this type of destruction at the Yellowstone site and knowing that this area is still an active volcano with multiple earthquakes very day that could easily trigger another eruption! Over half of the caldera is now filled in by Yellowstone Lake. Active hot spots are still being generated by the magmatic heat from the volcano that erupted 640,000 years ago thus causing today's geysers to erupt with steaming hot gushes of steam and water (like Old Faithful) to simple boiling springs like you will see with pictures of the Grand Prismatic Spring. Here are a few pictures and videos from the our drive from Wapiti to the Old Faithful area.
Rock formations as seen just east of Wapiti, Wyoming and near the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park
A Raven's fan should always take a photo of their favorite bird, especially when seen in the wild! This guy was posing at one of the scenic turnouts near Yellowstone Lake.
Here is a video taken of Lake Yellowstone from Lake Butte Overlook.
One of many hot springs in the Old Faithful geyser basin
Historic Old Faithful Inn. Notice the burned out trees behind the Inn. This is from a lightning induced fire in 1988 several weeks after we visited the park. The Park boundaries that are in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho encompass 2.2 million acres. The numerous fires that flared up that summer burned 37 percent of that acreage. It's hard to imagine how difficult it was for the fire crews to contain this fire so close to a world renowned and historic structure like this Inn.
Old Faithful geyser starting to erupt
About 30 seconds into the eruption
Reaching full strength
Here is a video clip of Old Faithful erupting!
Steam vents along the Firehole River near the Old Faithful Geyser Basin
The Old Faithful area is one of the most scenic locations in the Park and sought after by visitors from around the world. We were impressed by the traffic control and parking lots, but the hordes of people (okay we were there too) was way too much for us to handle for more than a couple of hours. So we moved on to another area called Grand Prismatic Spring. As we drove into the parking area, the Park Rangers were closing the area down due to safety reasons. We did not hear directly from the Rangers but we expect the wind changed direction and the sulfur smell from the hot spring was blowing directly into the viewing area for the visitors. We looked at a map and saw a trail on the opposite side of the hot spring, so we maneuvered over to another parking area and decided that an unscheduled hike might get us a better look at the spring and one that the Rangers would unlikely close off. Our hunch paid off. Look at the colors of this spring! We don't think we would have gotten a view like this from the deck that you see on the other side of this photo. BONUS!
Grand Prismatic Spring
Thunderstorms were moving into the area from the west so we decided to drive back to Waipti and then another 30 miles to Cody, Wyoming for a look around the town and dinner. Cody is your quinteessential western cowboy town and appeared to be a base camp for many Recreational Vehicles and bikers. Based on the t-shirts and overheard conversations many of the bikers had just gotten into town from a rally in Sturgis, South Dakota and were heading into Yellowstone. There was no lack of RVs and Bikers in Yellowstone!
The biggest attraction in Cody is their Cody Nite Rodeo. Although we did not stay long enough, they showcase this well known Rodeo http://www.codynightrodeo.com/ every night at 8:00 p.m.
