Yellowstone is a vast area.
No website about Yellowstone is complete without a picture of Old Faithful erupting.
Yellowstone is a vast area.
As we enter Yellowstone from the South in the less busy time of late September, traffic is stopped by a buffalo-jam.
The Upper Geyser Basin is a large area containing many geysers, hot springs and other thermal features. Old Faithful Lodge, a visitors center and other facilities are here making this a major hub of the park. The most prominent geyser here is the renown Old Faithful which has a viewing area with some seating available not far from the parking lot.
We pass a herd of bison on our way to the visitors center in Upper Geyser Basin.
The Geyser Hill Group is very close to Old Faithful and just over the Firehole River.
The Solitary Geyser is a ways off from the other geysers. It is reached by a short hike on the Observation Point loop trail from the boardwalk on Geyser Hill.
The Solitary Geyser.
The Firehole River winds through the Upper Geyser Basin.
West of Geyser Hill is the Castle Group. It is a short walk from the Geyser Hill Group. Castle Geyser is the most prominent geyser of this group. Crested Pool is another well sight worth seeing.
The Black Sand Basin is a very short drive from the Upper Geyser Basin. A boardwalk through the Black Sand Basin leads visitors to various geysers, pools and hot springs. Iron Springs Creek runs through the basin.
The Midway Geyser Basin has just a few thermal features, but two of them are very large. The Grand Prismatic Spring is the worlds third largest hot springs. Excelsior Geyser used to be the worlds largest geyser with eruptions as high as 300 feet. Since the 1880's though, it has been, for the most part, a very large hot springs.
Driving by the Midwest Geyser Basin. The Firehole River is in the foreground.
Two unusual features (its hard to be unusual in Yellowstone) are the paint pots and the fumaroles. The paint post are simplistically, boiling colored mud. The fumaroles have very loud hissing steam and other gases coming out of the ground.
Sheepeater cliff was named after a band of the Shoshone called the Tukudeka or Mountain Sheepeaters. The Tukudeka would often hunt Bighorn sheep. The cliffs themselves are very interesting. They are what is called columnar basalt caused by the rapid cooling of lava. The cliffs tend to break apart in columns. It is a very strange site.
Downstream of the Yellowstone Lower Falls is a long and deep canyon, very fittingly, called the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.
Mammoth Hot Springs is quite large as you will see in some of the pictures below. Throughout the hot springs area, travertine terraces are formed by limestone dissolve in the hot water of the springs. Travertine refers to the type of rocks that are formed from the limestone deposits of the hot springs water. Terraces refers to the shape the travertine rocks that are created. The surface of these rocks have the shape of multiple descending steps or terraces.
The Northeast entrance to Yellowstone is on highway US 212 from nearby Cooke Montana. This side of the park is in the mountains of the rugged Absaroka Range.
