Yellowstone Park, WY

We spent most of the afternoon in Yellowstone despite the cool, overcast weather. This park is huge. I know it's 2.2 million acres in size although I can't quite get my mind around what that really means. Even out here in the West, where everything is larger, this is a big,big place.


It's difficult just to explore all of the park accessible by the Grand Loop which is actually two loops that form a rough figure eight. Yet alone explore the areas of the park that are only accessible via over 1000 miles of back country trails.



Today we saw geysers and paint pots and fumaroles and steam vents and bison and elk and coyote and chipmunk and more birds than you could count.

Oh, and we saw a bear.

That's right, we saw a bear. Not up close mind you, however we did see a black bear in his natural environment. Slowly wandering across the side of a hill, munching a few berries and taking time to look under rocks for whatever it is that lives under rocks and bears find so appetizing.


Across the valley and partway up the side of a small mountain, you could see this bear with your unaided eyes although you could see much better with binoculars. Pretty exciting. And nothing stops traffic in Yellowstone like a bear. In fact, the rangers call them Bear Jams. This one was a classic Bear Jam. Can't imagine how crazy it gets during the summer and/or the bear is closer to the road.

People pulled over wherever they could and tried to see what everyone else was looking at. Once they heard everyone was looking at a bear they would stand there until they too could see the bear. That bear has no idea how many people were watching him go about his business nor does that bear have any idea how many people were thrilled by simply seeing a bear walk across a hill.

Firehole Canyon is one of the few places where they allow swimming and we saw a couple swimming there. It was only 49 degrees outside however you could tell these two were determined to go swimming no matter what.

Actually, this swimming hole is downstream from a number of the geysers whose superheated water flows into the river, so the water temperature is warmer than a normal river.


We did see Old Faithful erupt. I mean, you have to go see Old Faithful. Somewhat anticlimactic after seeing all the other geysers and steam vents earlier in the day. Of course, the fact that it erupts so predictably is a large part of its appeal. The rangers post the next time Old Faithful is expected to erupt, plus/minus 10 minutes. We went to the Old Faithful seating area ten minutes before the predicted eruption and sure enough, about 5 minutes later, Old Faithful sent up a great shower of steam and spray. Very cool.

This really is a strange and wonderful place. The sights are amazing today; one can only imagine how other worldly this place appeared to Native Americans and early explorers.

And you also can't help think that if we could only harness the geothermal energy from deep inside the earth we could easily power the entire country.

How do we do that? Don't know, but I'm sure somewhere, some of our best and brightest minds are working on utilizing this endless source of power. I hope so.


See Ya!