road trip america part three: yellowstone national park

welcome to yellowstone, where the earth's crust is as thin as cardboard, water boils furiously underground and everything smells like eggs. warning: do not let your brother wander off the trails or he may fall into a geyser while your father is not paying any attention, and his skin will melt off, his hat will shoot up off his head, and most important, the film in his camera will be lost forever.

when you hear the name yellowstone, the first thing you think of is old faithful, is it not? well, either that or jellystone and pick-a-nick baskets. or maybe that's just me. but anyway, in all honesty, old faithful loses some of it's splendor once you have the chance to take in all of the other geysers and hot springs in the area. it's pretty unbelievable just how many there are. one right after the next, each one different from the one before it. old faithful was pretty unreal to experience, it just puzzles me that with all that bizarro geothermal activity going on, that's the famous one. i mean look at this stuff:

*note: no, the color of the water has not been enhanced in these photos. it's actually that beautiful. and yes, it really does ferociously boil like a cauldron full of sulfur soup.

riverside geyser (above) & old faithful (below)

aside from all the fun geological phenomenon we saw, we also made a lot of furry friends:




i was so excited to see wild bison just hanging out. one actually crossed the road a few feet in front of my car. a little intimidating, especially since a woman was gored by one at the park the day before. we saw a ton of gigantic elk roaming around, too. no see any grizzly or moose sightings, but that's ok. maybe next time. some other critters we saw over the two days we were at yellowstone (that i didn't get decent photos of): black bears, bald eagles, and pelicans.

i took this picture on our six mile hike. i don't know how long ago the fire was, but it looked fairly recent, maybe in the past 4 or 5 years. there were a few tiny shrubs, but mostly just tall grasses, with charred, black trees standing around like skeletons in a field. it was really quite beautiful.