September 7 - Yellowstone

Summer days are drawing to a close and there is a definite nip in the air. This past week Lyle and I were fortunate enough to grab one more week of camping. Our destination was Yellowstone National Park. We had been there before but so long ago that our memory of that last trip was fairly vague. I do remember that the previous holiday was in mid-summer and it was hot. This time around, fall was beginning to show its hand.

It was overcast when we drove through the north gate of Yellowstone National Park. The greens, browns and yellows of the trees and mountains that bordered the road blended together in a dark mass of indeterminate colour. Even the sky seemed drained of its regular blue and appeared as a dirty grey dome overhead. Every so often, the bland landscape was punctuated by a rising spurt of brilliant white steam from an erupting geyser.

We made our first stop at the boardwalk at Norris. Thinking that it was a boardwalk, I didn’t take my cane with me when we left the car. It was a mistake. As Lyle reminded me, I should always have my cane with me. Before the beginning of the boardwalk there was a series of uneven steps – not so easy to negotiate without my cane.

The walk around Norris was fascinating. At one point, we were looking into a small sinkhole when on the other side of the walkway a geyser suddenly came to life. It was totally unexpected. There was only one other couple on the path with us and we stood together watching the steam and boiling water burst fifteen or twenty feet straight up. I was more impressed with this small geyser than I was when we watched for Old Faithful on the following day. At Old Faithful the crowds were kept away at I suppose was a safe distance, but it was too far away for me to see the famous geyser with any clarity.

Another point of interest was the boardwalk around the Paintpots. In recent history a large crater had opened up and the bacterial mats of orange, green and slime brown spread out from very close to the walkway. It felt a little surreal and in my imagination, perhaps like walking over the surface of an alien planet. Just as interesting was the boiling water which flowed from the upper crater into the river at the start of the walk. A sign read that 500 gallons of water flowed from the crater and into the river every minute.

There are three pictures with this. The first shows a pool of boiling, bubbling water with steam rising on the side. The second picture is of one of the smaller geysers. In the third picture, I am standing in front of the stream of boiling water, which is emptying into the river at a rate of 500 gallons of water per minute each and every day of the year. 

Bubbling pool

Small geyser

Sue and more bubbling water