UPDATE: 15 October 2003
Yellowstone
When I think of
Yellowstone, I think of the geysers we saw - like this one to the left.
They're amazing! Clearly the Plains Indians had inhabited the area for
generations, but when the first white man discovered the are back in
1810, he thought he had found Hell on earth. When John Colter went back
to tell others of his discovery, no one would believe his tales of pots
of bubbling mud and scalding water spewing forth out of the ground. The
area was called Colter's
Hell for
years. The American writer Rudyard Kipling later described it as "a
howling wilderness of three thousand square miles, full of all
imaginable freaks of a fiery nature."
Yellowstone was created by a series of volcanic eruptions, the most recent of which took place 600,000 years ago and spewed ash across all of north America. That blast is believed to have been between 1000 to 10,000 times greater than the Mount St. Helens explosion. The park covers 2.2 million acres and takes several hours to cross by car. When it was founded in 1972, it became the world's first national park. It's located primarily in northern Wyoming but also spills over into southern Montana.
Geysers in the distance |
Mud bubbling forth from the center of the earth |
A female mule deer |
A juvenile cinnamon colored brown bear that crossed the road just in front of us. There are around 700 bears in Yellowstone - around 200 of which are grizzlies. |
Steve has been to Yellowstone many times and has great stories about his encounters with bear and buffalo while camping here. |
Wildflowers |
Mom and Dad |
Mom and me in one of the many fields of wildflowers |
A buffalo - also known as a bison - or if you saw Dances With Wolves then you know the real name is Tatonka. We saw more buffalo than I could count. |
Steve uses his binoculars to check out the pronghorn elk and the herd of buffalo across the valley. |
Light breaking through clouds just before dusk. |
Several rivers cut through the park. |
KIM'S LIST OF THE BEST OF YELLOWSTONE:
 |
Geysers and bubbling mud spewing from the ground. |
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Seeing so many wild animals in the valleys in the parks. |
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Buffalos and wildflowers. |
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Seeing a real grizzly bear in the wild. |