June 2-3 - 2018 West Yellowstone, Montana

Saturday, the 2nd, we moved from Cardwell to West Yellowstone, Montana (130 miles/ 210 km).

If Washington DC was on JJ’s must-see list, Yellowstone National Park was on Mary’s.
Sunday we went to Yellowstone. We are camping just half a mile (800m) from the East Entrance of the Park.
That is in Montana, but right after the entrance you enter Wyoming, in which more or less the whole park is located.

Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the US (1872) and also the first national park in the world. It is huge. 3500 square miles (9000 km2). That is as big as Delaware and Rhode Island combined(Sjælland+Lolland+Falster).

The park is located on top of a huge volcano. A third of the park is a caldera (krater) from the last eruption about 600,000 years ago. The caldera is 45x28 miles (72x45km) which also indicates the force of the eruption. It is believed to be 1000 times larger than the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State in 1980.

The volcano is still considered active and when it erupts again (next month? or in 500,000 years), it is going to have a massive impact on life, not only in the US, but the whole world.

The National Park Service has done a great job of making the attractions easy to get to (as usual – impressive). The road in the park is in a figure 8. Sunday, we did the lower part of the 8. That part alone is 95 miles /150 km, which gives you an idea of the size of the place.

The park has a lot of all kinds of nature. Some we have seen before, like…

Mountains and lakes

Yellowstone Lake

Rivers

Fire Hole River

Waterfalls

Lower Falls of the Yellowstone Canyon

Canyons

Yellowstone Canyon

The Continental Divide 😊

There were also some new things. Even though we have seen some volcanic things (Mt. Lassen, Crater Lake, Newberry National Volcanic Monument), we had not seen any active volcanic activity. There is a lot of it in Yellowstone!

A large portion of the park has hydrothermal activity. Warm water and minerals (such as sulfur) are pumping up from the underground, creating many strange and fascinating things. There are signs everywhere, warning people to stay on pathways. The water is VERY hot (sometimes boiling), and VERY acidic (syre). It can dissolve a pair of boots in no time! People have been badly injured. It was VERY tempting to get closer to some of the things, but we kept to the paths😊


There are lots of geysers
The most famous of the geysers, and probably the best-known attraction in Yellowstone is Old Faithful (sådan ca. “gamle trofaste”) It erupts (er i udbrud) relatively regularly, between 65 and 90 minutes (depending on the length of the last eruption). An eruption lasts 2-5 minutes and it shoots an average (gennemsnitlig) of 5000 gallons (knap 20.000 liter) an average of 145 feet (44m) into the air.
The National Park Service predicts the next eruption(+- 10 minutes)  online, so we didn’t have to wait long.

Here Old Faithful is to the left



Old Faithful

 

 

Hot springs

Mudpots/volcanos - Like boiling mud

 

Thermophiles (heat-loving bacteria) create colorful edges on pools and streams.

This is called "Artists paint pots" because there are all different colors

 

 

And, we saw lots of buffalos (bisonokser)! 



This guy was only 3 feet (1 meter) from the car.
We would not have gotten that close, if we were not in the car!

There were lots of calves in the herd.

Written by JJ and Mary