Yellowstone Park - day 2

Between the two of us, we took so many pictures, its taken me forever to pick a few.  This was our view from our campsite.  That's a platform for a tent.


Forest fires are a natural rejuvenating process.  When the trees become too crowded and overgrown, the forest floor gets no sun, therefore there is no undergrowth to feed the animals.  Most of the fires in Yellowstone have been started by lightning.  The lodgepole pines' pinecones have a wax like substance sealing the seeds inside.  They need a temperature of at lease 400 degrees to melt, therefore, during a fire, the seeds release, new trees start.  Note the burned trees, the green forest floor and the small trees starting to grow.  Wild life has returned to this forest.  We saw many forests through the park at different points, or different ages.

More Yellowstone beauty.

These next 2 pictures look more like paintings.

These are the Bleached Cliffs.  The white comes from cool weather steamy whips from the calcite springs.

This looks like a fence, but they're stone.  These were caused by the flow of hot volcanic ash, as it cooled 1.3 million years ago, it caused these cracks.

This is Tower Falls.

We saw the Upper Falls and Lower Falls, the rushing river going through that canyon was beautiful.

That was a "gotcha"

And this was a "gotcha back".

This was the petrified tree, it was burried by volcanic ash where it was not allowed to rot and eventually turned to stone.

Here is an explanation.

Then there were the buffalo, I loved the buffalo.  Look at how many there were on this plain.

We got stuck again because of buffalo on the road, only this time it was daylight and we weren't the only ones.

We really got up close and personal.

They're so ugly, they're cute.

And huge.  They moult, see how their fur is gone from the back of their front legs and back.

There were many babies.  They're 3 & 4 months old.

We went back to the place I mentioned yesterday to get a better look at how the road is built NEXT to the cliff and took a better picture.  Scarry!

We went to the mud volcanos, look at the pink grass growing in the middle of the mud.

These are the mud pots or mud volcanos, they are constantly bubbling.

The steam comes from water splashing up into caverns.

And look at the large mud pot.  This whole area smelled of sulpher.

Yellowstone Lake is very large and very beautiful.

There's quite a history connected to the Old Faithful Inn, I encourage you to read it.

You should see the interior, all made from trees from the park.

This sign was hanging on the wall.

And there it is, it's hard to tell where the water is because of the clouds, but it was really high.

And there's the other "Old Faithful".