Yellowstone National Park

Left Jackson for Yellowstone this morning. Yellowstone NP mainly sits within the state of Wyoming but bits of it are in Montana and Idaho. Where we’re staying in the town of West Yellowstone is in Montana.

The park is actually situated on top of the Yellowstone Caldera which is still considered an active volcano. In fact Yellowstone is considered a supervolcano which means that its eruptions are pretty epic/huge events! Going through the park it’s quite clear the volcano is still active with lots of hot springs, mud pots, fumarole (steam vents) and geysers. Swimming in the hot springs is banned here and with good reason considering many of the springs have temperatures above boiling point!

There are boardwalks built so that you can safely check out the sights as the thickness of the earths crust is rather unpredictable. Walking on them you have to wonder about the poor guy who got the dangerous job to build it especially when there are pools of bubbling hot water that have appeared under the walkway! The smell isn’t too bad either. Only some of them smell like rotten egg gas and you can make it smell not as bad if you face your head so that it doesn’t blow into you when you breathe.

Got to catch Old Faithful do her thing as well. Pretty impressive. Depending on how long she erupts for they can predict to within 10 mins when the next eruption will be. Tomorrow it’s back for some more exploring of the geyser basins taking in the numerous walks around the different geysers and pools.

And as usual, some pictures. The first few are from Grand Teton yesterday…

Gotta contine the sign collection/posting. The one with me next to it wasn’t so great. Needed an unusual angle due to some Americans deciding it was an awesome place to have a convo right in front of the sign that people wanted to take photos off! Yes there are some occasional US gripes we have…

Hey there elk, how’s it going? This guy crossed us on the Signal Mountain trail. Grand Teton says to keep 300 feet (91 metres) but Yellowstone says only 25 yards (23 metres). At least this one didn’t have antlers.