July 14th, Yellowstone National Park

Friday, July 14, 2006
Day 19
Yellowstone National Park

Simply incredible! Words cannot describe this place. If you have never been here, you must come here!

This morning we took a Ranger-led hike on Storm Point Trail. It started by a “pond” called Indian Pond and we walked along the shore of Yellowstone Lake. The “pond” was created by a hydrothermal explosion and is actually a deep crater from that explosion. We learned a lot about the Yellowstone volcano, of which Yellowstone lake is only a small portion. The 3 mile hike was very interesting. We discovered information about the “fire and ice” history of this place. Fire: the volcano; ice: the glacier over a mile thick that covered this area. We also learned about the Cutthroat trout that populate the Lake and Yellowstone River. Big and beautiful they are! We also learned about an introduced species of Lake Trout that unfortunately are eating the native Cutthroat. You can’t keep the Cutthroat if you catch them, but take as many Lake Trout as you want!

While on the hike we saw some bison up close and personal. We also saw a yellow-bellied marmot. We learned a bit about trees. The main tree around here is the lodgepole pine. There are also “spiky” spruce trees, and “friendly” fir trees. If you don’t get that, the spruce trees feel spike when you touch them and the fir trees feel softer.

At the end of our two hour excursion, there were some very big bison right by our car. Rodney was back further taking pictures of some other bison. Sheldon, Brianna and I had to cross to the other side of the street to avoid the bison at a “safe” distance. Bison can wheel around very fast and can run at 30 mph. Anyway, by the time Rod got back some other people were going really close to the bison, like within 4 feet! Rod and I mentioned it to the Ranger who led our program, since she got back at the same time as Rod. She went over and got those people away from the bison probably in the nick of time, because the bison was beginning to paw at the ground, which is an aggressive posture. Some people just have no clue about how these animals are WILD and can be dangerous! Good Grief!

We came back to trailer, had lunch, and then Rodney took a nap. We are both feeling under the weather today, as we have come down with colds. Speaking of cold, it was 40 degrees when I woke up this morning! Brrrr! Anyway, the kids went out into the woods (small patch) in front of the campsite and were building a fort out of all these old lodgepole pine logs that are everywhere. They had a lot of fun doing it. A couple hours later we took a drive around part of the park.

We drove to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. That was amazing. We did not realize that Yellowstone really even had such a canyon until recently. The Yellowstone River flows in the bottom of this canyon, and we learned today that the canyon was formed from the huge amount of water that was dammed up due to the vast amount of ice that was basically stuck in a narrow section of the rock. As this ice moved slowly to the north it got jammed up in one place and a bunch of boulders were stuck there too. Over hundreds of years the ice melted and eventually the dam gave way. Scientists believe that they entire canyon was carved out in only 2 weeks time! That is amazing to me!

On the way back from the Canyon, we stopped at the Mud Volcano. Tomorrow we are going to do a more extensive program there, where we should learn a lot about this feature. But, basically it is very smelly from all the hydrogen sulfide gas coming out of the ground, and it is very hot from all the super-heated water that is rising up from cracks in the crust where it was in contact with the molten magma only 1-3 miles down underneath us here! The hydrogen sulfide somehow gets converted to sulfuric acid, except I can’t remember how right now, and this acidic stuff is basically dissolving and eating away at the rocks creating mud. The mud is boiling! It smells nasty and looks weird. One place was called the Sulphur Caldron and had a pH of only 1.3! For those of you who don’t know that is somewhere between battery acid and lemon juice! Very low pH! Very acidic stuff. You wouldn’t want to fall in there.

After the drive we went to a kids program at another campsite. It was a campfire Ranger talk. She discussed nocturnal animals and it was quite informative. We learned all about owls, bats, moths, spiders, coyotes, and crickets. We all enjoyed it. As we were leaving we saw 3 bucks in the woods between the road and the campsite we were visiting. We ventured down a little trail and got within 30 yards of them. One was a spiked buck, one was a 6 pointer with no brow tines, and one was a ten pointer! These mule deer were all relatively young, but already had nice antlers.

We ate dinner at the cafeteria at another area of the park where there is a lodge. The food was OK, but more importantly, when we left we saw a bunch of elk feeding near the edge of some woods. Wow, Rod finally got to see the elusive elk! Boy was Sheldon excited; he’s been wanting to see elk for weeks now. A few yards further up on our drive we saw two more cows (elk) right next to the road. These things are like the size of horses! Now, if only we could see some bulls (the males)!

So, if you love pretty scenery, are interested in geology, like volcanoes, want to see animals, or just want to escape from the rat race for a while, this is definitely the place to come!

More to be said tomorrow…