John-n-Sylvia's 2011 RV Trip: Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park – Upper Grand Loop – July 15-16

Geysers, hot springs and waterfalls everywhere. We had heard that Yellowstone is beautiful, but we had no idea just how different the park really is from anything we’ve ever seen before. We planned to stay here for 4 nights but that will not be anywhere near enough to see all we want to see in Yellowstone.

In order to get to our RV Park we had to drive up through Yellowstone to the West Entrance in the city of West Yellowstone, Montana. Going through the park we decided not to stop with both the RV and the Toad to look at any of the sights, but to go directly to the RV Park, find a way to get both vehicles cleaned up and get the coach set-up for our stay, before doing any touring.

However on the drive up, we came across a group of female elk along the side of the road, so we had to stop and take their picture.

As opposed to the last RV Park we were in, this one – Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone - is the best we have been in. On checking in I asked about where to find a do-it-yourself car wash to clean up the vehicles, and they told us we could do it right at our site in the park. This is the first RV Park we have found that would allow you to wash your vehicles on site with their water, and they encouraged us to do it here. Refreshing after that last park.

Big Motorcoach, small brush. It ended up with me getting very wet before we got the vehicles clean, not to mention arms that felt like they would fall off….

I flopped down into bed after that. No touring today.

July 16, 2011 - Next morning, bright and early we headed for the Park.

The Yellowstone area was formed over 640,000 years ago when huge volcanic eruptions took place here that spewed out nearly 240 cubic miles of debris. A 30 by 45 mile caldera, or basin, was formed from those eruptions. That caldera is now the central portion of the park. The heat from the magma deep within the earth that caused those eruptions is still powering the park’s geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and mudpots.

The water erupting, boiling or oozing from any of these volcanic features is mostly surface water that seeped down into the earth, gets superheated and then mixes with minerals within the earth. Underground restrictions in the earths crust determine whether a feature is a geyser, a hot spring of boiling water, a fumarole (a hole in the ground with steam coming out), or a mudpot (a bubbling, gurgling acidic mud hole), causing the superheated water to come to the surface differently.

A geyser has obvious restrictions which cause the resulting boiling water and steam to shoot 100 feet or more into the air. A hot spring is relatively restriction free, so the boiling water just bubbles to the surface, and the water level goes up and down in the spring pool. A fumarole has limited water with little restriction, so it just ends up a steaming hole in the ground. A mudpot would be a bubbling hot spring if not for a lack of water, so it ends up being boiling, bubbling mud.

We decided to tackle the North Grand Loop route first. The North Grand Loop starts out following the Gibbon River, a small river at this point. So first stop was Gibbon Falls. Most of the waterfalls in the Park show the boundaries of lava flows and thermal areas from the original eruptions that created different levels for the river to ascend.

Gibbons Falls is not a spectacular falls, but here is a picture. You can clearly see the magma formations around the waterfalls.

The earth’s crust around the thermal area features is relatively thin and unstable. The National Park Service has constructed boardwalks so you can walk on to the various features, with signs everywhere warning you not to step off the walkways or you could risk serious injury or death if you fall through an unstable area of the earth’s crust.

We next came to an area called ‘Artists Paintpots’. The area is called that because of the various colors of the thermal features resulting from minerals in the water such as sulfur, iron-oxide, chlorophyll, arsenic, and more, and also from microbial populations and algae formed in the heated waters.

The dark brown, orange, rust and red colors result from iron-oxide or arsenic minerals in the water coming to the surface.

The green and blue-green colors from chlorophyll or algea

Here is a mudpot

And two close-ups of the bubbling mud.

And a bubbling beauty on a boardwalk, beyond a bubbling blue spring

More wood art. - First a small mouthed dinosauriosus.

Next a short-jawed Alligatorus

Last, a Tufted Eagle Beaked Kingfishus

Driving to the next location we had our first Buffalo sighting.

Next stop was the Norris Geyser Basin, a really active moonscape with long boardwalks throughout the basin. I want to emphasize LONG boardwalks. I think it took us about 2-1/2 or 3 hours to get around this area.

This area is called Porcelain Basin.