geology
Yellowstone, Day 2, Sunday, July 23Kate had told me before we went to sleep to wake her up when I woke up so we could get an early start on our day. So, at about 6:45, I did. Somehow, it still took us almost 2 hours to break camp and get moving. Our first stop was to be Old Faithful. It took 45 minutes to drive there from our campsite, long enough to tip our hat's to the Lord's Day and listen to a Tim Keller sermon from Proverbs. We got there about 5 minutes before Old Faithful was scheduled to erupt. Perfect timing.
From there, we went to see Beehive Geyser erupt. It erupts once a day and we got there just before it erupted as well. Its called Beehive because the cone it erupts from at its base resembles a beehive.
From there, we walked the geyser trail, but didn't get to see any others erupt for quite awhile. We just missed "Giant" which was rather disappointing. There is another geyser, "Grand" that had not erupted in many years (50+? I don't rightly remember), until 2005 when it erupted twice. Since May 2006, it had been erupting about every 9 days, and we were there on Day 9 since its last eruption. As we walked past, it was spewing water and seemed like it might erupt, but it did not. It had however attracted a number of "geyser groupies" who sat and waited on it to erupt for days on end. I never found out whether or not it erupted that day. My favorite geyser was "Spiteful." It bubbled and bubbled and bubbled as if it were about to erupt and never did. We got to see one more regular-erupting geyser, Daisy, erupt before we left and had another encounter with a bison.
By then, it was noon, and we were HUNGRY. And tired. We drove and saw some mudpots, mineral springs, paint pots and various other geological structures before having to take a nap in a meadow in order to keep on trekking. 
My favorite was the steaming waterfall. I'm really fascinated by all of these geological oddities. Did you know that Yellowstone National Park sits atop a volcano that has not erupted in something like 300 million years and all of these steaming things are the remnants of that?
Labels: travel
posted by CP @ 8:14 PM
3 thoughts
3 Comments:
Better a geyser groupie than a baseball groupie, i suppose. it always kind of interests me the wide and diverse range of hobbies that people can have, like nathan and his gumby doll collection.
i'm ready for a new post - j. alfred's nemesis.
Is that like his evil twin? I posted in an effort to be contrary to my contrary nature. I said nothing of substance in keeping with my contary nature.
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