Today's trip into Yellowstone saw us leaving very early to avoid the traffic and arrive at Old Faithful for the first of the ranger talks/guided walks, and the 8:35am geyser explosion.
The walk was great. We took so much more away from it with the ranger's anecdotes, than if we had simply walked around and looked at the geysers on our own. Funnily enough each of the geysers that were 'regular eruptors' were all rather tardy. So as we tired of waiting for 'the event', and headed off to continue our tour, the geysers obviously sensed it and chose to erupt once we were all about 50 meters away!
Of particular interest to me were the underwater geysers in Yellowstone Lake. The water in the lake was so clear, that seeing the opening under the water was no problem at all. The other hot springs in the area by the lake were rather sulphorous - leading the boys to exclaim that 'this place stinks, it makes me feel sick' (Oliver) and 'I wish I wasn't here!' (Benedict)
Again today we passed bison grazing on the grasslands with their young, and wandering along the road, as well as spotting deer in the distance. The whole area of steaming hot springs, geysers, waterfalls, bison wandering freely, exposed volcanic rock, and fertile green plains surrounded by tall pines, made me recall reading the "Clan of the Cave Bear" series by Jean Auel - it is just as I imagined where Ayla would have lived and hunted (albeit in Europe).
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| bison |
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| Old Faithful |
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| dangerous chipmonk! |
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| steam and smell! |
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| Old Faithful again |
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| The girls and fabulously blue water |
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| Oliver and Black Pool - misnomer, I am sure |
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| staring into the abyss |
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| On a trail walk, crossing a suspension bridge |
