Our Flatulent Earth

It seems the more there is to blog about the less time there is to blog it!

This week, for the first time ever, I got to go to Yellowstone National Park. My sister-in-law was in town, so she, my wife and I all went together, and it was extra awesome. We took the long way, and drove east then turned north to go through Grand Teton National Park first. For those of you who don't speak french, "Grand Teton" means "Big Boobies." Here are the Tetons:

That's the view a bit east of Rexburg. This picture isn't from my trip, there was too much haze for a picture this good, but this is my favorite picture of the Boo... the Tetons, taken by my dad a couple years ago. Here they are from the other side:

We stopped for lunch at a place on the north side of Jackson Lake, then went on to Yellowstone.

The first thing we saw at Yellowstone was Old Faithful. You can't go to Yellowstone and skip Old Faithful, it's too much an icon! I'm glad we did it first, though, because it wasn't the coolest thing there, though it is very cool. We waited 30 minutes before we got to see it erupt, while a busload of high school (or junior high? I'm getting too old to tell the difference) kids chatted about nothing, with occasional hilarious comments on the geyser. For example, there were a few girls discussing the sonic booms you hear when the water travels to the surface. I really hope they didn't get that idea from their teacher, but it's entirely possible. Before the main event, Old faithful gives a few little sputters:

And of course it steams the whole time. The whole crowd gets excited at each sputter (the crowd is a small part of why Old Faithful isn't the coolest thing at Yellowstone), and then becomes anxious again as the high school guys speculate that maybe Old Faithful has given its last eruption and we all missed it. But then it went, and it was very impressive:

The eruption we saw was relatively small and short, but definitely worth the wait. Next time I'll skip it, though, in favor of other things, and see Old Faithful again when I have kids old enough to appreciate it.

Of course there wasn't enough time to see everything, so we picked a couple geyser basins and gave ourself enough time to see Mammoth Hot Springs before the day was over. Here are some pictures I took at Black Sand Basin:

Spouter Geyser

Cliff Geyser

Opalescent Pool

Emarald Pool

Sunset Lake

The stream here is called Iron Creek. All the white stuff is calcite deposited by the geysers, just like white spots left on the faucet as the water dries from your sink. The black is calcite with iron in it, which turns orange as it rusts:

Next we went to Midway Geyser Basin. At this point my wife and her sister decided they were tired and would admire the geysers from a distance, so I hiked the loop trail myself and took lots of pictures:

Hot geyser runoff into Iron Creek.

Excelsior Geyser, once the largest geyser in the world until its final eruptions in the '80s. Now it's a very productive hot spring.

Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in Yellowstone and third largest in the world.

Turquoise Pool

Grand Prismatic Spring overflows at a regular, constant rate, building small calcite terraces:

Most of the geysers smell like rotten eggs, due to hydrogen sulfide gas that is released with the eruptions. Apparently Mother Earth has rotten egg farts.

My favorite, though, was Mammoth Hot Springs. These hot springs have deposited huge amounts of calcite, in many colors (though mostly white). This, to me, was the most impressive thing we saw on the trip (of course the women enjoyed the view from the top, while I hiked to the bottom, snapping pictures, then back up):

I seem to have a thing for pictures of dead trees:

And the coolest part of the coolest part is Orange Spring Mound:

Between attractions we saw a cool waterfall on Iron Creek:

And of course wildlife, though not as much as we'd hoped. We saw a bison right near the road, but not blocking it (not a good spot for a picture, though). Of course we saw elk, too, and my wife took a distance shot of a bison with some elk (this is extreme zoom, so slightly grainy):

There was also a moose, but unfortunately no bear, but we saw a Russian midget working in a gift shop, which partly makes up for it.

Speaking of Russians, the languages I heard spoken by tourists included Chinese or Japanese (I think both), German, Russian, Spanish, french (yech), and I think Greek. Oh, yeah, someone was speaking English, too.

It was an extremely fun trip; if you haven't been to Yellowstone I highly recommend it. Be sure to give yourself all day to see as much as possible, and check out the website to get an idea of which stops you want to make before you go. I definitely plan to go again in a few years.

Ok, nerd time. The term "geyser" comes from an erupting hot spring in Iceland called Geysir, which is the world's oldest known geyser. Geysir got its name from the Icelandic word "gjósa," which means "to gush." Sorry, I couldn't resist sharing this, since it's a connection to Iceland.