Hello everyone and greetings from Gardiner, Montana. As many of you know, I am at Yellowstone National Park for the weekend with my friend Todd. I finally started a travel blog only to find out yesterday that there is no Internet anywhere in Yellowstone NP so this will be by only entry until possibly Sunday when we are in Jackson, Wyoming. I plan to post pictures when I am back home.
We arrived in Jackson Hole yesterday and were immediately overwhelmed by the natural scenery. I don't know a really good way to describe it except to say that we really had that sense of being very small and in the middle of nowhere. We drove through Grand Teton National Park on our way to Yellowstone. The Grand Tetons are tall rocky mountains with pointed peaks that reminded French explorers of breasts, hence the name. The scenic road wound through a long wide valley with the Tetons on our left. We stopped at Jenny lake and took pictures and then continued on to Yellowstone. All along the drive we passed numerous lodgepole pines and groves of Aspen trees with leaves turning bright yellow.
Once in Yellowstone we stopped a few times and took pictures of rivers and waterfalls along the way. We passed over the continental divide several times as it winds haphazardly through the park. We finally arrived at our hotel late in the afternoon. We are staying at the historic Old Faithful Inn, a 100 year hotel built out of logs. The lobby has a 70 foot open area with a giant fire place and several balconies with chairs and couches. There is a large patio outside with a bar and a perfect view of the famous Old Faithful Geyser which erupts about every 90 minutes.
Yellowstone NP sits in the giant Caldera of an ancient volcano that exploded about 640,000 years ago. The whole area is still active and has more geysers and other geothermal features than the rest of the world combined. There are literally geysers and hot springs everywhere one looks. We spent this morning walking around the upper geyser basin which is next to our hotel. There are boardwalks to walk on as it is not safe to walk near the geysers and hot springs because new ones can pop up at anytime and the water is boiling hot and often highly acidic.
Later, we took a long drive up here to Gardiner, Montana outside the north entrance of the park. We came here to eat lunch and to say that we have been to Montana. Montana is now the 39th state that I have been to. On the way here we stopped and took more pictures at the Fountain Paint Pots, a bubbling mud spring. There were more geyser there and we actually saw someone walking down to way to see what the water felt like. As Todd said, "Bill, we are now witnessing stupidity!"
We are now heading back into the park to Mammoth Hot Springs where we will see the travertine terraces. These are terraced calcium carbonate formations formed from water bubbling up from the ground with a high mineral content. I will write more about that in my next entry. I hope all are well.
