The South Riding RV Travels

June 4th - Yellowstone National Park WY

We came into Yellowstone National Park from the south picking up the valley of the Yellowstone River. This was the way the first explorers came to the park. The route was very scenic although we were tired after a long drive from Utah.

Once again we had mountains as a background to our travelling. Since the bulk of the park is over 7500ft it was inevitable that the surrounding mountains are snow covered. These are the Absaroka mountains situated to the south east of the park

Apart from the mountains, the most striking feature was the trees which are almost exclusively lodgepole pines. And the quantity of burned trees is most noticeable. 1988 was a very bad summer for fires. It had been (and still is) park policy to let fires burn out by themselves as this leads to natural regeneration of the forest. However in 1988 the fires were so bad that this policy was reversed but to no effect. Despite spending over $240 million the fires proved unstoppable until the autumn rains came and over 940 million acres of forest were burned. The landscape is recovering but each year sees a number of additional fires burning several thousand acres.

However amongst the trees there are meadows and wild buffalo can be seen grazing these, usually in ones or twos. The quality of the grassland is not good and a buffalo is a huge animal so I guess they spend most of their lives grazing..

The other principal feature of the park is the geothermal activity in the shape of hot springs heated by the magma which is not so deep in this area and released to the surface through the many fractures in the earth's crust here.

The first area we visited was the 'mud pots' just to the north of Fishing Bridge. Generally the east side of the park (the Atlantic side) is less active than the western (Pacific) side.

If the particular vent has plenty of water then the end result is a boiling spring seen here with the steam rising.

Where there is less water then you get mud pots which may just plop gently to themselves occasionally emitting a burst of steam from these fumaroles. The surrounding colours may vary depending upon the oxides present or possibly the thermophiles (heat loving organisms) which thrive if the water is hot but not boiling.

There are endless numbers of these pools with differing colours and bubbling and boiling more or less. This particular set of pools is quite acidic and sulphurous so the smell is not the most pleasant.

This pool is known as the 'Black Cauldron'. It is thought that there is a cave which is alternately blocked and unblocked by the water in the pool. Thus it constantly gurgles and emits clouds of steam. I certainly did not want to investigate this particular cauldron - it seemed to be a real 'witches brew'.