Don't forget the small wildlife. This one is noteworthy because it looks just like one of many fly-fishing ties that GreenEyedGirl saw growing up-what a coincidence! We then had to look for them in the store...ended up in a bit of a conversation with the fisherman/sales guy...
Day 2 continued the visit to Gibbon Falls and then the thermal basins that are near Old Faithful.
Turns out that Yellowstone has many really great waterfalls.
Midway and Lower Geyser Basins have some of the best examples of mud pots and photogenic springs that are easy to get to.
Every time I kept thinking, can that blue be real?
Mud pots!
Oh the mud pots! These are neat because they change over the course of the season. In the spring when they are full of snowmelt they are like a pot of boiling soup. As the water dries off through the summer they thicken and make more of a 'bloop' than a boil.
Of course some of the mud pots are spring fed and stay watery all the time. They make quite the splash.
This area has one of the best views of a thermal stream running into a river-so fascinating!
At the top it was particularly steamy-time to get funky pictures.
On one side of the walkway is Excelsior crater-I din't see this type of cliff/crater anywhere else in the park.
Grand Prismatic Spring is on the other side. This is one of the most photographed areas-such a great reflective surface.
And don't forget, Grand Prismatic is where scientists discovered Thermos Aquaticus, the archie-bacteria that gave us the Taq polymerase which enabled a revolution in molecular biology thru PCR!
ReplyDelete