The Half Acre of Hell

Let me begin by confirming several "rumors" that I previously believed to be just that.

1) Yellowstone stinks, literally. The microbes in the water eat sulfur and produce sulfur dioxide which renders the air around the various attractions almost unbreathable. I don't think wearing a bandana as many brave touristas attempted would help much, but you could try it. A gas mask might be more appropriate. It's not completely unbearable, but it is quite a shock when you first pull up to Mammoth Hot Springs (or any other geyser area for that matter).

2) "Bear Jam" has nothing to do with the Country Bear Jamboree. Instead these are traffic jams caused by the sighting and subsequent desire to photograph wildlife on the side of the road. Bear jam is really a misnomer too, because they could be caused by wolves, elk, deer, or bison. Your choices in these situtations are either to give in and pull over yourself to snap a picture or sit in your car patiently as a ranger (hopefully) arrives and directs traffic through the area. Either way, patience is the name of the game and depending on the type of "jam" you may be rewarded with a great up-close and personal view of the wildlife causing it.

3) Yellowstone won't feel as crowded as Yosemite because it's a bigger park. This is partly true. Yellowstone is a larger park and there are parts of Yellowstone less frequented by tourists at the height of the season [namely the northeast corner], however, this visit felt significantly more crowded than our one day at Yosemite despite the fact that we went to each park in the middle of the week.

Ok, that out of the way it's time to tell you about our visit to West Yellowstone. We'll be visiting East Yellowstone tomorrow since we start and end our day in campgrounds on that side of the park.

Yet again we entered through the fabled Roosevelt Arch [insert giddy Mark squeals of delight here]. Our first stop was Mammoth Hot Springs. Now my experience with hot springs in the past was that there was an area of thermal pools that one, being swimsuit clad, can enjoy. This is not the case at Mammoth. There are no tourist friendly pools. In fact, there are several warning signs letting you know that you MUST stay on the boardwalk because leaving it could result in severe scalding and even death by burning. The picture of the little boy boiling in the steam vent while his little sister looks on horrified really drives the point home.

The first thing you notice is really the smell I mentioned before. Pure sulfur in the air. Almost like the stink bombs some students [not my students] bring to try and set off at school torturing the rest of the school population for the rest of the day. After a while you get used to it and can begin to appreciate the forces at work.

What Mark and I found just incredible and could not wrap our heads around is the fact that there is enough thermal energy to keep these features going most days all day. We were walking in the remnants of a giant volcanic caldera whose energy results in the most thermically active area in the country [aside from Hawaii]. It is truly a "see to believe" concept and even when you've seen it you still may not fully believe it. I mean you're in forests and all of a sudden there is a vast space of "nothing" and there are pools of boiling water, steaming geysers, smoking mountainsides, bubbling mud, and rainbows of microbes.

I knew Old Faithful existed, but I did not anticipate that it is not the only active geyser in the park.

In addition, we found out that any seismic activity can affect the eruptions of the geysers and that Old Faithful used to erupt every 74 minutes, but is now faithfully erupting every 94 minutes [give or take 10 minutes]. The crowd that showed up was large and diverse to put it lightly. Still our expectations of the eruption itself were completely met. Although Mark has been to Yellowstone before, we were still both floored by the forces at work to make Old Faithful possible.

I was looking very forward to seeing the "Grand Prismatic Spring" in the Midway Geyser Basin. You have probably seen aerial photographs of the spring. It has a deep blue in the middle and fans out to green, yellow, and deep orange. I don't know why I thought I would be able to get the same view/photograph myself. In reality you walk up to the edge of the spring and you are about your height above the surface plus one foot added by the boardwalk you must stay on [you have no idea how difficult it was for me not to kneel down on the path and touch the water constantly flowing beneath us]. Add to this height deficit the fact that the water is still hotter than the atmosphere around it and therefore has a perpetual layer of steam rising off of it and the picture below was the best Mark and I could do.

Finally, something else that surprised us even though it shouldn't have were the "animal jams." Before getting to the park we were trying to decide which animals we would be most likely to see. I figured that we really wouldn't see any animals since surely the park is so large they would not want to roam in people-populated areas. Boy, was I ever wrong! We started the day with a "bear" jam where I jumped out of the car at the rear of the pack, ran towards the gathered crowd, snapped a few pics, and rejoined Mark as he passed by the crowd. Later in the day, as we were pulling into the Old Faithful area, we had a close encounter with a bison [it was not the first sighting, but certainly the closest we had today].

After a full day of sightseeing, we pulled into the Bridge Bay campground. Our site today was in the middle of a field with other tents surrounding you. I failed to mention earlier that it was a rather windy day. We were quite worried about how our little tent would hold up considering that there were no trees to buffet the "breezes" swirling around us. We went to bed hoping we'd wake up to a tent around us and dreaming of the sights we'd see the next day as we explored East Yellowstone.