Saturday, February 20: Sheridan WY to Yellowstone National Park

We're off again - heading north into Montana, then west across that state and then south into Yellowstone - a roundabout route, for sure, but it's probably best that we stay on the roads that aren't closed for the winter. The landscape was beautiful, but as we lost altitude, we also starting losing the snow. There were still deep drifts in some places, but other spots were blown clean by the wind.

Another good day for wildlife watching - we're up to a dozen pairs of bald eagles - surprising to see so many. And we're still seeing a good many pronghorn antelopes - the farmers must love them - in a couple of fields, the pronghorns far outnumbered the cattle. We also spotted a few deer - mostly mule deer.

In mid-afternoon, we finally reached Yellowstone - approaching the park from the north and heading into Mammoth Hot Springs. This grand entrance, the Teddy Roosevelt Arch, was named for the president who was a big supporter of Yellowstone, as well as other national parks. Yellowstone National Park sprawls across the northwest corner of Wyoming - over 2 million acres of geysers and other hydrothermal features, crystalline lakes, thundering waterfalls and panoramic vistas. The park sits on top of an active volcanic plateau that includes the largest concentration of geothermal features in the world.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its name. The first white explorers in the area were the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. When passing through present-day Montana, they were told about the Yellowstone region to the south, but they chose not to investigate it. In 1806, John Colter, a member of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, left to join a group of fur trappers and passed through a portion of what later became the park. His descriptions of this place of "fire and brimstone," as well as reports from later mountain men and trappers, were dismissed as myth. In 1856, Jim Bridger reported boiling springs, spouting water and a mountain of glass and yellow rock - his reports, too, were ignored because Bridger was known for being a spinner of yarns and tall tales. It wasn't until 1869 that an 'official' expedition documented the wonders of Yellowstone, and by 1872, Yellowstone National Park was created.

We started our own exploration in the northwest corner of the park - Mammoth Hot Springs. As the name suggests, this area is known for lots of hot water and steam bubbling from the earth - although our first sight was a herd of elk.

Unlike some other thermal features, these hot springs leave behind travertine (calcium carbonate). The travertine forms huge terraces and mounds resembling giant stairs or ski slopes. How does this work? As the super-heated water rises from deep beneath the earth's crust, its acidic nature dissolves the limestone. At the surface, the water deposits travertine, producing natural sculptures similar to the way stalagmites are formed in caves. The result is tier upon tier of multi-colored, cascading, terraced stone. The sculpting of these ever-changing terraces continues today as thousands of gallons of water well up and deposit more and more travertine.

We took advantage of the late afternoon sun (a balmy 30 degrees) to walk the trail through the area known as the Lower Terraces. As we walked, we could see steam escaping from the snowy mountainside.

Along the trail sits a cone-shaped stone, about the height of the 3-story building, known as the Liberty Cap. It supposedly resembles the knit caps worn during the French Revolution. The Liberty Cap was formed by a spring that had enough pressure to raise water above the growing formation, allowing mineral deposits to build slowly and continuously for hundreds of years. It is estimated to be about 2500 years old.

Further along the trail, the water from Palette Spring flows in criss-crossing patterns down a steep ridge where heat-loving micro-organisms create orange and brown colors. The effect is much the same as an artist would achieve by letting watercolors run down a vertical surface.










Around the middle of the trail, there are massive terraces that resemble sandcastles or layer cakes. Some of them are bubbling over with hot water, some are oozing water or steam, and some are dormant. It's a landscape like nothing we've even seen before. We would have stayed longer and seen even more, but the sun dipped below the horizon and the temperature went with it.

We headed back to our lodging for the next couple of nights, the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. It's big and old --complete with clanking steam radiators and lacking in amenities such as television, telephones and internet. We enjoyed the evening ranger program - the Night Sky of Yellowstone - inspired us to head outside in the near zero evening to see what we could see - lots of stars!