Sequim Daily Photo

More of “the best idea”

Here are more views of Yellowstone. Above is the Tower Fall region in the northeastern corner of the park.

Also in the northeastern region is the Lamar Valley. This beautiful high desert is rich with wildlife.

The Gardiner River is in the northwestern side of the park. This view was taken south of Mammoth Hot Springs.

Canary Springs, above, is part of Mammoth Hot Springs.

This final view is taken from the Upper Terrace of Mammoth Hot Springs, looking down toward the resort. You may be able to see the red roofs of old Fort Yellowstone to the right.

Tomorrow I’ll show you some of the other tourists at Yellowstone and then we’ll return to Sequim.

Lest you get the impression that Yellowstone is only about geysers and hot springs, today I’ll show you other views of this magnificent park. The landscape is as varied and beautiful as any I’ve seen; it is a land of superlatives. Its 2.2 million acres is as large as the states of Maryland and Delaware combined with much diverse terrain. Above is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.

Earliest human habitation of the Yellowstone area is estimated to have begun more than 10,000 years ago. Over 400 human habitation sites have been documented throughout the park. Archaeologists have discovered stone tools including knives, shaping tools, and projectile points. More recent Native American inhabitants have included Blackfoot, Crow, Shoshone-Bannock, and Nez Perce tribes. (Hayden Valley is shown above.)

Yellowstone became a national park in 1872, the world’s first. It has been called “America’s best idea” and was the precursor to the establishment of our current National Park System. Its early management progressed in fits and starts with underfunded and ineffective park administration. The park’s natural resources were abused and development of tourist facilities chaotic. Settlers moved in without permits. In response to this, before National Park Service rangers were organized, the U.S. Army was the official custodian of the park for 30 years. (Above is near Bunsen Peak, south of Mammoth Hot Springs.)

The Army patrolled year round to reduce poaching. They also improved access to the park and constructed public and administrative facilities. An early camp constructed at Mammoth Hot Springs evolved into Fort Yellowstone. Many of the original buildings still exist and are used by the National Park Service. Other historic structures were built to accommodate tourists, including Old Faithful Lodge.

Biology in color

I’ve never seen quite so many saturated, dramatic, and glorious colors in nature as I did in Yellowstone. Nor so much of it. For this you can thank thermophiles, organisms that thrive in high heat environments. And because their heat tolerances vary, there is different coloration in different heat zones. One stunning example of the variation, above, is Grand Prismatic Spring. At a distance, even its steam runs a rainbow spectrum.

Outfalls from springs can move into more mustard-toned spectrums as water cools.

Many pools where the underground passages are open and reach deep into the earth range from deep turquoise to shades of blue-green and emerald.

Closer views can be otherworldly..but then, so can the entire landscape. In places it can have the chalky lifelessness of a moonscape. And in others the land is alive with color and the vibrancy of active geology.

Earth alive

Yellowstone National Park is a dynamic hotspot of geology in action. A vast swath of the southwestern part of the park is a volcanic caldera formed by an eruption that sent about 600 cubic miles of ash across much of what are now the western United States. (By comparison, this was about 2,400 times more material than Mt. St. Helens sent up in its impressive explosion in 1980.) Geologic features throughout much of the park highlight what heat, water, minerals, and time can create. Yellowstone has the largest collection of hydrothermal features on the planet.

Heated waters surface and flow, changing direction and volume over time. The effects can be stunning. The top two photos are from Mammoth Hot Springs in the northeast corner of the park.

Vistas can be filled with steam from fumaroles, holes in the earth’s crust through which steam escapes. If I’ve got the details right, in most places the earth’s crust is over 20 miles deep. In Yellowstone it’s about 3 miles thick, closer to the earth’s surface than in most other parts of the world. There are about 10,000 features known to exist in Yellowstone’s geyser basins.

The geothermal features in Yellowstone are so unique that it was designated a United National Biosphere Reserve site in 1972.

In parts of the park it seems as if everywhere you look something is steaming, boiling, or erupting. I’ve never seen so much amazing, restless earth before.

Close and exciting

Before we went to Yellowstone I had only seen antelope in the wild, once, at a very great distance. That time was the kind of sighting where I mostly trusted DH’s declaration “Look! Antelope!” because they were tiny specks on the horizon far, far away. Antelope? Skinny cows? Darned if I could tell the difference.

No problems with these sightings. Antelope!

These antelope appeared over the crest of a hill as we drove by. A convenient pullout allowed us to watch as one, then a small herd came into view and eventually crossed the road in front of us.

These two critters were the highlight of my trip. Bighorn sheep. They were close enough that I saw the slit pupils in the eyes of the one on the right. I’m still excited.

I’ve been trying to see bighorn sheep for years. When we lived in California we went to Death Valley National Park about 20 times. Over the years we learned that bighorn sheep could sometimes be seen in Titus Canyon, a rough 27-mile journey that could take a good part of a day. We drove it numerous times, looking, and once missed a sighting by seconds. Our consolation prize was once seeing a coyote pounce onto its dinner. Cool, but no bighorn.

We saw other bighorn sheep twice in Yellowstone, on the high crest of a hill. They jumped across jumbles of rock outcroppings like gymnasts on parallel bars.

Tomorrow I’ll start showing you other sights at Yellowstone.

Where the wild things are

I’ll start showing you Yellowstone National Park where we started: with some of our incredible wildlife sightings. The Lamar Valley is reputed to be the best area for this and it did not disappoint, though we saw and learned of animals everywhere in the park. For us the one animal we saw the most of were bison, some of them as close as the road we traveled on. We saw them singly, in pairs, and in herds.

At one time bison nearly disappeared from Yellowstone. By the 1880s poachers had reduced bison numbers in Yellowstone to only 40. (National Park Service rangers weren’t actively managing parks until 1916.) Management programs brought the bison back and today there are about 5,000 in the park. This small herd was split across both sides of the road. Can you see the small reddish one in the distance to the left? A ranger called this a “red dog,” one of the newest members of the herd. Young ones have that reddish hue until darker, coarse fur grows in.

This was one of many wildlife traffic jams we encountered as one kind of animal or another walked either across the road or, in some cases, along with traffic.

Another animal we encountered soon after we arrived near Yellowstone was the local elk. We pulled into the parking lot of our first accommodations in Gardiner, Montana to find this elk cow and calf grazing on the landscaping. We saw lots of other elk throughout our trip, grazing. They’re particularly fond of the Mammoth Hot Springs Resort where there are lots of lawns and for the only time in my life I’ve had to watch my step to avoid elk droppings on the sidewalk.

Tomorrow I’ll show you other animals we visited in Yellowstone. Spoiler alert: No bears, wolves, or coyotes.

Now…where was I?

Late last month we went somewhere new to us to do some exploring. It wasn’t long before we noticed that we were joined by people from far and wide. Have you ever taken a road trip and noticed car license plates from everywhere? Let me dispel any notion that it is something that people outgrow. At least I haven’t.

As we moved around looking at sights I couldn’t resist recording the plates we saw from far and wide. The more I saw the more interesting it became. (I admit it. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to amuse me.) That is a European plate on the motorcycle in the bottom right, above. And a Dutch flag on a Harley Davidson (yeah, it’s not a plate, but I knew Cat would enjoy this). Then I noticed that Canadians were showing up, too.

After DH mentioned “We haven’t seen any Mexican plates,” one morning, bingo! There was one from Chiapas, Mexico. But I’m not just posting a license plate collection here. I’m also issuing a challenge. Interested?

By the time we left I had captured 49 U.S. state license plates. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t find that last one. I’ll send a little souvenir of my trip to the first person who posts a reply which correctly tells me which state it is. (In case you have trouble reading it, the plate in the lower right of this collage is West Virginia. And the tiny one that reads “JAB” in the top shot is from New Hampshire. Two down, 47 to go.)

Where’d we go? If you don’t recognize it, this is Yellowstone National Park — Porcelain Basin in the Norris Geyser Basin. I came home with about 1,000 shots of this amazing place. I’ll show you a few of my favorites and give you a free tour in the coming days.