SNOW! Really? In September?! We dropped what we thought was quite a bit of elevation from Canyon last night and even though we knew it would maybe snow we were still a little surprised to wake up to snow. Now we were really happy that we did the drive to Canyon yesterday, got over the pass, and got out of there as well. Other than the, “this sucks we’ll have to put on chains” and the “we didn’t really come equipped with snow gear” the snow was beautiful. It was fun to tromp around it in the morning and there weren’t many campers up there so it was a beautiful walk along the creek. Then the hilarious camp host came roaring around on his golf cart telling everyone that we had to be out by 9am so off we went.
Our destination was the Old Faithful visitor center to pick up the 2nd “young scientist” booklet Yellowstone offers but somehow missed the turn and ended up in West Yellowstone. Which in the end was fine, because the distances aren’t all that far and we saw so many more animals along the way. Mainly elk and bison, but watching bison cross rivers in the the snow is just really neat and I don’t get bored of it.
Once we were back on track towards Old Faithful we went by all the springs and mud pots. What a trip the mud pots were. Listening to those bubble and roar is a little scary, but also visually satisfying. The colors in all the springs and bacterial mats are mesmerizing and to see all those colors in one area feels unbelievable. What I didn’t quite realize as we were driving around Yellowstone yesterday and feel like I must’ve known this, but it didn’t really quite sink in until driving around today…is that Yellowstone National Park is an active volcano. You can’t help but imagine the world billions of years ago when there was just algae and bacteria, the beginning signs of life. Not till I saw these today, did I realize how amazing, but also scary Yellowstone is. Yesterday at the visitor center at Canyon focused on Yellowstone being a super volcano, but not till driving around was it all really starting to make sense. I think we were too tired and had so much other inputs at that point last night. Anyway…here’s my educational part of Yellowstone, for those of you who are actually reading this and/or care 🙂
Most of Yellowstone National Park is part of what is known as the Yellowstone Caldera. We are currently sitting a top the MOST ACTIVE hot spot in North America and is considered to be the LARGEST SUPERVOLCANO in the world. It erupted 2.1 million years ago, 1.2 million years ago, and again 640,000 years ago. The latest eruption 640,000 years ago (1000x times greater than the eruption at Mt. St. Helens) is what created the yellowstone caldera as we know it today. It is 45 x 28 miles wide. The caldera is huge! Everything inside this Yellowstone caldera is the National Park. All the beauty and geothermal phenomena are because it is currently an active hot spot. The geysers, the mudpots, the fumaroles, and springs are all because we are above an active volcano. It’s kind of a trip that we are walking and driving ON TOP of an ACTIVE VOLCANO. The magma (called magma below ground, lava above ground) is only 3 miles below the ground in some areas. It is the magma heating up the water that causes all these spectacular things to exist. It is almost a definite that it will erupt again, but it may not be for another few hundred thousand years in the future…hopefully 🙂 Yellowstone is very active and has over 2,500 earthquakes a year.
The difference between Geysers, springs, mudpots, and fumaroles…it all depends on the type of rock, level of heat, and the amount of water. GEYSERS, what we think of when we think of Yellowstone, like Old Faithful: The rock under geysers are hard and do not break down under with the heat and water. The water heats up and wants to escape but they have constrictions in their “plumbing” that allow pressure to build, causing an eruption. 2/3 of the world’s geysers are in Yellowstone. HOT SPRINGS, like the “Great Prismatic Spring” that Yellowstone is famous for, is a large pool that amazing electric blue color that turns to green and is bordered with orange/yellow/red/brown. In hot springs, water circulates freely to the surface. The color comes from the minerals; microscopic heat loving bacteria and refracted light. In the blue areas the water is too hot for bacteria to grow. Near the edges thermophiles, heat loving bacteria, make the brown, orange, red, yellow, and green colors. MUD POTS, look like boiling pots of clay. Thermophiles use the hydrogen sulfide gas that rises from the magma chamber and turn the hydrogen sulfide gas into sulfuric acid. The acidic water then dissolves the rock into mud and clay. The thickness of the mud pots vary with precipitation and can change from a soupy consistency to the consistency of boiling thick oatmeal. FUMAROLES are steam vents. They are similar to geysers but there is so little water that it all turns to steam before it reaches the surface and produces a hissing noise. They are the hottest hydrothermal features in the park.
Crazy, right? Again, I though I knew some of this, but this is really the huge added bonus of doing this with our kids. I’m so intent on having them learn about the national parks and not taking this “homeschooling” as a joke that its forcing me to learn and understand more and better about the why then just looking at the beauty of it. It’s really quite fun.
Anyway after seeing all the mudpots and springs on the way to Old Faithful we finally got what I was really waiting for…the bison traffic jams. They are just so cool and fun. Well at least in the fall when its not already traffic jam 🙂 The herd looked like it was easily a 100 and some were bolting across the road so fast you really are amazed that these large animals can move that fast. We ran into a few other ones to, but often just a solitary buffalo crossing the road and walking right by your car.
After all that, the day was still not over and we finally made it to the Old Faithful visitor center. Picked up the young scientist packet there, saw Old Faithful erupt, watched the educational movies, walked around and read all the exhibits…and by now it was finally all coming together. I was now feeling bummed that we didn’t have more time to learn at the Canyon visitor center which focused on the “supervolcano” aspect.
Here is my PSA of the day…PICK UP YOUR OWN GARBAGE. It was snowing when we went to see Old Faithful erupt and all the benches were wet, so I ran inside and grabbed some toilet paper to dry off the bench so we could sit for a minute. Apparently we weren’t the only ones with that idea…but we may be one of the few that clean up after ourselves…because there were 2 old ladies that their SOLE job was to go around and pick up the left over toilet paper people used to dry off the benches after each Old Faithful eruption. I was disgusted to see these old ladies have to bend over and pick up everyone else’s trash. I’ll have a picture below of the amount she came back with. I asked if I could take a picture and she said “yes, but this is not a proud moment”. THROW YOUR TRASH IN THE GARBAGE PEOPLE.
We went to dinner at the Old Faithful Lodge…just because. The dinner was nothing exciting, but glad we went. The lodge is the original lodge and the 85’ fireplace was pretty neat. The girls worked on their junior ranger and scientist packets at these adorable desks in the lodge for another hour after dinner and we closed the visitor center down at 8pm so they could receive their badges.
No camping at Old Faithful so we drove back to Madison campground near the west side of the park. We barely made it through one round of canasta before we went to bed.