7/7: Yellowstone's Grand Finale!

Our last day at Yellowstone National Park, the country's first national park, started with a drive south from our hotel in Gardiner, Montana, just beyond the north entrance to the park toward the West Thumb Geyser Basin located in the southern part of the park.

This was our last chance to take any photos of the interesting rock formations near the northern entrance by Golden Gate. 

Since arriving in the park several days earlier, we'd hoped to see some elk but hadn't seen a one. We were delighted, therefore, to see these ones while driving between the Canyon and Fishing Bridge sections in the eastern part of the park. 

Since going on a safari in Africa years ago, we knew our best chance of seeing animals in the wild was always coming across other cars who had already stopped obviously because of an animal sighting! We were pretty stoked when we next spotted a bear resting in the open meadow where vegetation was shorter and more light was available than in the dense, dark forests that covered most of the park. Watching the animals gave us a sense of what the world was like before humans. 

A trifecta with lots of buffalo grazing and drinking by Trout Creek!

Note all the people on the top of the hill watching the buffalo.

Though the buffalo appeared docile grazing in the sun and looked as if they could hardly move, we weren't fooled. They could spring to their feet in seconds if threatened and could leap over fences and run 35 mph. Even at a distance, we knew not to frighten them or give them any reason to be angry as they were dangerous and unpredictable. 

Infinite patience was required driving through the park!

The scenic Elk Antler Creek: 

North of Fishing Bridge was the Hayden Valley. It was there we stopped to see the very stinky Sulphur Canyon which was ten times more acidic than lemon juice because of its location of the edge of one of the most active areas of Yellowstone's buried volcano. Even though gases with the unmistakable stench of rotten eggs had filled the cauldron with sulfuric acid, the muddy pool still teemed with life.

Billions of thermoacidophiles convert the pool's hydrogen sulfide gas into sulfuric acid almost as acidic as battery acid. The acid, in turn, breaks the soil and rock into mud which makes the spring a very muddy home. 

Across the road was the Mud Volcano Area. A walk along its boardwalk sounded exciting as it would take us to evocative sounding names such as Mud Geyser, Cooking Hillside, Sizzling Basin, Churning Caldron, and more!

Sour Lake may have looked like a fun place to swim but it was named for its 'sour' water that would burn our skin like battery acid. Micro-organisms have created sulfuric acid after consuming sulfur and have also given the lake its attractive color. 

Before earthquake activity in 1978-9, Churning Caldron was a cooler spring covered with mats of micro-organisms. The water became superheated which killed off some of the mat-forming microbes. Beginning in 1996, the caldron began spurting water up to three feet in the air. 

Shaken again and again by earthquakes, the temperature beneath it rises and falls which constantly transforms Churning Caldron. Though scalding hot, the caldron's water doesn't reach the boiling stage. Gases rise through the vents that have been opened by earthquakes, then rumble and bubble to the surface which causes the water to roil or churn. 

Before 1978, we would have had to walk on a densely forested trail to reach Mud Geyser. In the late 1800s, the geyser erupted every few minutes, spewing muddy water 50 feet in the air. The eruptions, though, stopped by 1927.

That changed again fifty years later when a series of earthquakes shook the area and soil temperatures skyrocketed which killed many of the trees surrounding the pool. When violent steam vents began hissing around the turn of this century, large craters opened up that were wide enough to swallow logs that fell in. I wonder what the geyser might look like if we were ever to visit again!

We had to veer off the boardwalk to escape the buffalo as it didn't look like it had any intention of moving for a while. It was a little too close for comfort!

Yellowstone's early explorers described Mud Volcano as a "most repulsive and terrifying sight" because the volcano-like cone measured 30 by 30 feet and spewed mud high enough to cover trees. But in 1870, it was only seen as a "seething, bubbling mass of mud" after a violent eruption had blown out one side of the cone, leaving just the crater. 

Another trail led to Dragon's Mouth Spring which has captured visitors' imaginations for centuries. The Crow Native Americans perceived the steam as snorts from an angry male buffalo but its current name originated with an unknown park visitor. It's also been identified as Gothic Grotto and The Belcher! No one knows why the spring's activity has lessened since 1994 or the water temperature dropped ten degrees in 1999 and the color changed from green to chalky white.

The creek leading away from the spring had the most disgusting shade of green gunk!

The creek's unappealing appearance was a good reason to then head further south along Gull Point Drive toward West Thumb Geyser Basin! I'd forgotten how beautiful the park's Yellowstone Lake was from our previous visit umpteen years ago. The 410-foot-deep lake was the largest one above 8,000 feet elevation in North America.

We found as pretty a spot that you could ever find to spot for a picnic lunch with only geese for company.

In the winter, when holes in the thick ice indicate hot spots in the lake bed where thermal features bubble up, otters often fish in the melt holes. 

Snowcapped mountains and whitecaps at Pumice Point north of West Thumb - Just when we thought the park couldn't possibly show us something more beautiful than we'd already seen! The lake has been described as the heart of Yellowstone with its water acting as the lifeblood for a large number of plant and animal communities. Imagine being treated to the sight of trumpeter swans and moose feasting on the aquatic growth in the lake's shallow waters.

Overlooking the lake was the West Thumb Geyser Basin which was caused after the earth's crust collapsed and formed a caldera following a powerful volcanic eruption about 175,000 years ago. Later filling with water, the depression became this large bay on Yellowstone Lake. The West Thumb caldera lay within the even larger Yellowstone Caldera, one of the world's largest. It was interesting to learn that this caldera was as large as Oregon's Crater Lake caldera we'd visited a few weeks earlier on this trip! 

I could easily understand how people have long been drawn to West Thumb. Native Americans used to camp here when hunting for buffalo in the summer; the Crow people gathered medicinal herbs; the Bannock and Shoshone would tell tales about the lake's formation; and early scientific expeditions rested at the basin after corroborating the tales of colorful hot springs.

Mimulus Pools was the name for a number of blue pools n the basin's Lower Group that have often either a very low level of water or are nearly dried out altogether in the summer. That obviously wasn't the case for us in early July!

Abyss Pool was one of the deeper hot springs in Yellowstone at 53 feet deep. I was very surprised to learn that its color ranged from this startling turquoise to emerald green to various shades of brown. A visitor from 1883 eloquently described it as "a great, pure, sparkling sapphire, rippling with heat." How sad to read that "bubble-brained vandals" throwing objects helped to lower the temperature in the pool. Tourists' garbage has also caused the partial blockage of the vent, decreasing the amount of overflow in the runoff channel.

Abyss has been erupting intermittently since 1987 with a series of explosive bursts sending water from 30 to 80 feet in the air and a plume of steam above the treetops. Though we weren't treated to a display like that, the pool was still simply stunning. 

The iridescent Black Pool was similarly gorgeous though no longer black as it had been when lower water temperatures allowed dark green and brown thermophiles to grow in the pool. When water temperatures increased in the summer of 1991, it killed off the organisms. Though Black Pool also erupted several times that same summer and the following winter, it has been quiet since. 

The mesmerizing colors came in part from the thermophiles with orange and yellow indicating those living in hotter water. 

We were surprised when the boardwalk then led toward Yellowstone Lake unless there would be 'just' more breathtaking views of it and its magnificent backdrop. 

Almost immediately we came to Big Cone located at the water's edge. It was one of several geyserite cones along the shoreline that have been partially flooded by lake water although the top of the cone still protruded above the water. 

Seeing the strange underwater Fishing Cone was so peculiar but still quite beautiful. The vent was covered with rising lake levels from melting snow. The cone used to be a geyser with eruptions up to 40 feet high in the 1910s. Its name came from an old-time tradition of fishing in the lake and then standing on the edge of the cone to cook fish in the vent's boiling water before unhooking it. Visitors often dressed in a cook's hat and apron to have their photos taken at Chowder Pot or Fish Pot! A national magazine in 1903 said no visit to the park was complete without this experience.

It was really, really odd seeing underground water holes at Lakeshore Geyser also located along the shore of West Thumb. In order for it to erupt again, low lake levels are required to expose the upper parts of the mound. We missed the opportunity to see the geyser erupt because the two vents are normally underwater in the spring and early summer. 

Next up was Seismograph Pool in the foreground with the smaller, steaming, bluish Bluebell Springs in the background. Together, they used to be known as the Blue Pools prior to an earthquake in 1959. No one knows definitively but possibly someone thought Seismograph Pool somehow 'registered' the earthquake.  

I thought (and wished) I had taken a better photo of the Thumb Paint Pots, miniature mud volcanoes that rose three to four feet high with steam venting from mud chimneys in various shades of red and also small, churning mud pools. Unfortunately, you'll have to use your very vivid imagination or see them for yourself if you're able to get to West Thumb!

Surging Spring came by its name when it's active and overflows, sending waves of water surging into the lake. Guess what - it wasn't surging when we were there! Even so, the colors were sublime. 

It was so windy we weren't surprised someone had lost his hat at Blue Funnel Pool! Long known for the distinctive color around its perimeter, the water in the pool cooled and sank below its rim when Abyss Pool began erupting in 1991. 

Though for some unknown reason geyser eruptions were less common in West Thumb Geyser Basin, the colors and shapes of the pools at West Thumb were just as striking and remarkable as those we'd seen the previous few days at Lower, Midway, Upper, and Norris geyser basins at Yellowstone. West Thumb was like a grand finale to my favorite national park that had something for everyone - wild animals, geysers, thermal pools, mountain lakes, fascinating hikes and drives, travertine terraces, and on and on! 

Next post: Onto the adjacent Grand Teton National Park just a few miles south!

Posted on December 6th, 2020, from another glorious fall-like day in Denver's burbs. Please take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else, too, in these crazy times.