Day 18 Yellowstone

There are lots of videos in this post so it may be slow to load. You may also have to view it in your browser.

The entrance to Yellowstone was only a mile or two from our hotel in West Yellowstone, Montana. We were there at Sunrise.

Yellowstone was the first National Park in the USA and is also the first National Park in the world. Our earth contains 50 hotspots but only six of them are under continents making the Yellowstone hotspot extremely rare. Over 50% of the worlds geothermal features are in Yellowstone.

Even though you expect all the steam and hot springs it is still freaky when you peddle towards them.

Our first encounter was with Beryl Springs. Beryl is a blue-green mineral and the water was that color. Don’t confuse this with Baierl Chevrolet (shout out to Jeff Nock). It was hard to see the water because of all the steam coming out of the cave.

Next was Gibbon Falls.

We saw a couple of bison here and there. We stopped at this location because of the crowd of people. Everyone said there was a bear on the edge of the meadow. We could not see it and Chad had his meat sticks in a smelly proof bear bag so the bear had no desire to come over.

The falls at The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone were impressive.

A giant hot spring with nasty, sulfur smelling, yellow, bubbling water.

Dragon Mouth Springs which is part of the Mud Volcano area.

And the mud volcano. In 1870 it shot up in the air and within two years blew itself out.

As we climbed up and out of Yellowstone Park a lot of the Lodgepole pines were just sticks. It was a surreal scene.

Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent.

Even though we didn’t see a bear or moose, Yellowstone Park is still an amazing place!

Stats

• West Yellowstone, Montana to 3 miles east of East Yellowstone entrance (48 miles West of Cody, Wyoming)
• Distance: 87.9 miles (142 km)
• Climbing: 4336 feet (1322 m)
• Temperature: 36 – ??°F (2 – ??°C)

Sundry