Yellowstone Park, Wyoming

After we left the Badlands, I was expecting a similarly uneventful drive to Yellowstone Park.  We managed to take a detour off the I-90 (possibly the 2nd most tedious road after the M25) though and things got a lot more interesting.

We approached Yellowstone from the south and drove through Bighorn National Forest.  It was the drive of my life, full of breathtaking sights on all sides:

So exhilarating was the view that it was a while before I noticed that the ascent of 4000ft had caused our MPG to drop so low that the dashboard display had gone on strike and was just showing strange characters where the fuel consumption used to be.

Yellowstone itself is the world's first national park.  At just under 3500 square miles, it's vast but absolutely packed with natural wonders and wildlife.  It took us about five days to get around and see a small portion of what it has to offer.

In terms of the landscape, it's like a throwback from a more primitive North America.  The shapes and colours are beyond anything I've ever seen occur in nature before.  The main (but not only) feature that distinguishes it from the other parks is its abundance of geysers.  The way these geothermal phenomena interact with the terrain gives it quite a prehistoric feel, especially in early morning when the whole landscape seems to be steaming:

The most well known of these geysers is Old Faithful, so called because it erupts fairly regularly and predictably (roughly every 90 minutes).  While we were waiting for it to do its thing, one woman commented that they should put some kind of timer nearby so you know exactly when it's going to go off.  Not sure what she expects to do if it shows up late; maybe dock its wages or make it work overtime?

Old Faithful is by no means the biggest or most impressive though.  There are several others in the same area with their own unique characteristics:

The multicoloured terrain in the thermal areas (caused by the processing of chlorophyll by "thermophile" bacteria that live in the springs) is one of the most appealing things:

There's a faint smell of sulphur in many areas of the park due to all this subterranean thermal activity.  The eggy smell isn't particularly overpowering except in the "Sulphur Cauldron" area:

The liquid here is about 88°C / 190°F and its pH is about the same as battery acid so yeah, it stinks.  Look how much this bison is loving it though, sitting right on the edge of one of the pools.  The smell probably reminds him of an ex-girlfriend.

That smell hung around for a while after we left the area.  That's what I told Sharon it was anyway.  There's only so long you can "blame it on the sulphur" though!

Did you know that Yellowstone has its own Grand Canyon?  Once again this was breathtaking; I can't do justice to it in words so will let the pictures do the talking:

We didn't encounter any lethally poisonous spiders or snakes this time, although they are apparently around.  What we did see was an abundance of bison and a few black bears, plus (to my immense joy) a grizzly bear.  This guy was calmly eating his breakfast as we pulled up near a creek one morning:

 

I don't know what he's eating, but it definitely used to be alive before it had most of its major organs removed.  We think he was a fairly young bear as they do grow much bigger, but he was still a powerful-looking animal.  He kept looking over at us and each time he looked, the stare got a bit longer and the facial expression seemingly got more disgruntled, so we decided to move on and leave him in peace before he decided he wanted seconds.  Can't blame him really; if a load of strangers suddenly appeared outside my kitchen window first thing in the morning and started taking photos of me having breakfast, I'd have something to say about it.

If you have any common sense, you'll keep a respectful distance from the grizzlies but just in case, you have to be prepared with this stuff:

It's basically super-strength pepper spray, and is to be used in the rare event of an attack, assuming playing dead and making yourself look as big and menacing as possible haven't worked (running away is not an option - they can run about 40mph!).

We haven't had to use it yet, but we're nearly out of hot sauce so it could prove to have an alternative purpose soon....