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Photo essay: Yellowstone National Park – Today’s photo essay will contain the lion’s share of the hundred photos I have decided to post from our recent trip, as nearly half of all the photos I took were taken in or around Yellowstone National Park. It wasn’t easy whittling that number down to my top forty-seven, but I followed a similar philosophy to the first photo essay, including some of my favorite shots but also opting for photos with stories behind them when possible.

Before I get to our first photo, though, an introduction to our first day is warranted. As I mentioned in the trip write-up, on our first day we were at the park entrance by seven o’clock, which I thought was pretty early. We did indeed manage to avoid the worst of the crowds trying to get in; I’ve heard that the lines can get crazy, but I think there were maybe only a half-dozen cars in front of us when we got to the gate. There were more cars inside the park, of course, and we did run into a backup on the entrance road along the Madison River. Both Jared and Dennis had warned us that we would have to be prepared to stop a lot, as people will just stop their cars in the middle of the road if they see something. That first backup turned out to be some mule deer by the side of the road, and I must admit that I scoffed at this: “Have these people never seen a deer before?” Later in our trip, though, we were strolling along a boardwalk behind a group of younger people, and I overheard one of the guys talking. “People are going on about all this amazing stuff in the park,” he said, “and it certainly is amazing, but I grew up in the city, so I’m just like, ‘Holy crap! Look at that tree!’” I thought that was funny, but it also recalibrated my expectations; maybe some of the people visiting the park really hadn’t ever seen a deer in the wild before.

Oh, I suppose I should also remind you that you can click on these photos to get a larger version. Anyway, our first day was the “Hits” itinerary, meaning that we saw some of the park’s most famous sights. Two of those are found on the first half of the road traveling widdershins between Madison and West Thumb (for reference, here’s the park map I linked to in the write-up; you might want to keep that open in a separate tab to orient yourself as you go through the photos). The above photo is not one of those hits—it’s just a spring in the Lower Geyser Basin, which is the first major geothermal area you hit driving south from Madison. The brilliant blue of the hot spring is due simply to sunlight being scattered by the clear, deep waters, and the orange is produced by microorganisms called “thermophiles” (“heat lovers”) that live in mats at the edges of the springs.

You can also see a boardwalk here, which is a feature of every geothermally active area in the park. These boardwalks serve a dual purpose: safety and preservation. Personal safety is the purpose you see emphasized on information boards posted all around the park that feature an illustration of a young boy breaking through a thin crust of earth and falling into a hidden spring as his horrified friends and family look on. It’s pretty dramatic, but this sort of thing has indeed happened; in 2016, for example, a young man left a boardwalk, fell into a hot spring, and died. The other reason, of course, is that if everyone just trampled all over the park at will, the place would be destroyed. Obviously, people not dying is probably a higher priority, but preservation is important, too.

This is another geothermal feature that you will see a lot in the park: a mudpot. These are formed when the highly acidic springs dissolve the rock into clay, which then turns into mud when combined with water. As the gases rise up through the slduge, they form bubbles that pop and spray mud, as you can see in the center of this photo. The viscosity of the mud depends on the amount of water present, so depending on the season a mudpot might look like a cauldron bubbling with a thick witch’s brew or a pot of soup with smaller, lighter bubbles. This mudpot was pretty thick, making the bubbles and their popping pretty dramatic. Unlike hot springs, experiencing a mudpot can be just as much about the sounds as it is the sights; maybe you can hear the burbling, plopping mud in your mind as you look at this picture.

The next geyser basin is the Midway Geyser Basin, and to reach that you need to cross a pedestrian bridge over the Firehole River. We parked in the lot and walked down toward the bridge, but then I saw a trail going off along the river’s edge on the near side. I figured we still had plenty of time to see the basin, so I suggested to HJ that we walk along the river for a little and see what there was to see. I’m glad I did, because we hadn’t gone far when I looked up and saw a bison atop the opposite bank. It wasn’t the first bison we had seen in the park, but it was certainly the closest. I would say it was about fifteen meters (a little over 16 yards) away at best.

Now, I should note that this is much closer than you are supposed to get to a bison in the park—it is recommended that you stay at least 25 yards away from bison and elk (and other wildlife) and 100 yards away from bears, wolves, and cougars. Sometimes even 25 yards is not far enough, though; only a few days before we arrived in the park, a grandpa got yeeted into the air by a charging bison, doing a cartwheel before crashing back to earth and breaking some bones. He’s OK now, thankfully. If you watch a video of the incident (it’s pretty terrifying, but there’s no blood or anything), you’ll see that he was pretty far away from the bison, but you’ll also see that the bison was agitated (probably because of the summer rut), and a passing pick-up truck seemed to trigger its aggression. The bottom line is that the bison are wildlife, with deliberate emphasis on “wild.” Had we not been separated by a river, or had the bison shown any signs of agitation, I would not have even thought of being this close.

Since I’m on the subject of bison, though, one more thing before moving on. I was doing some reading online while preparing this photo essay to see what sort of experiences other people have had with bison in the park, and I read one post (no link because I don’t remember where it was and don’t feel like looking for it) from someone who described walking along a boardwalk, turning a corner, and coming across a bison. This individual then went on to relate how they had to sneak around the bison and at one point were within something like twenty feet of the animal. And I’m just sitting there reading this and thinking, “You had to sneak around the bison?! Someone was holding a gun to your head? You didn’t have to do anything, you idiot! If you turn a corner and see a bison that close, you turn around and walk the hell back the way you came!” Sorry. It just boggles my mind how stupid people can be sometimes.

And here is the Firehole River itself. There a lot of rivers that run through the park, and they are all this idyllic. We walked along the river for a little, and I found myself imagining having a little cabin high up on the bank—high enough to be out of reach of floods, but close enough to the water to hear it gurgle past.

We did eventually get across the river and into the geyser basin, the highlight of which is the Grand Prismatic Spring. You can see the same colors here as you saw in the first photo, just on a much bigger scale. The view that you see here is not actually from within the basin itself; the boardwalk you can see beyond the spring is the extent of what you can reach within the basin. You can get right up to the spring itself, but the view of it isn’t nearly as impressive. At least, it wasn’t when we were there, partly because of the angle and partly because of the steam that was rising from the surface of the water. This view is from an overlook along a trail that eventually leads up to Fairy Falls. We took the trail only as far as this overlook, as it was already starting to get quite warm.

Grand Prismatic Spring is one of the “hits” that I mentioned, and I was indeed looking forward to seeing it. I don’t think I was quite as blown away by it as I otherwise might have been had I not already seen so many pictures of it. It also reminded me a lot of Champagne Pool in Waiotapu, New Zealand. Waiotapu is a geothermal area on the North Island that is much, much smaller than Yellowstone (you can pretty much tour the whole thing in a few hours), but it is still very varied and impressive.

Our next stop was Upper Geyser Basin (Biscuit Basin was closed during our visit due to a recent eruption), which is most famous for Old Faithful. This, as you have probably already guessed, is not Old Faithful. It is a geyser, though, the third type of geothermal feature we’ve seen so far. This little fella was pretty enthusiastic, spitting water maybe two meters into the air. Again, you’re only getting the image here; try to imagine the splashing and hissing of the water as well. Also try to imagine the hot sun really starting to beat down on you, because that’s what it was doing to us.

This is part microbial mat, part mineral landscape. You see a lot of this near the hot springs and geysers, and I wanted to capture what looked to me like an intricately designed city of towers, all in miniature.

There it is: Old Faithful. It’s called that, of course, because it is the most regular of all the geysers in the park, which also makes it the most popular. Still, even though they can predict with a good degree of accuracy when it will go off, they still give you a time plus/minus twelve minutes. So, basically, there is a 24-minute window during which the geyser can erupt. (You can find eruption predictions for a number of geysers in the park on the official website.) When we arrived at the visitors center, there was about a half-hour left until the next window, so we took shelter from the heat in the visitors center before heading outside and having part of our lunch in the shade of a tree. There are benches arranged all around the geyser, but by the time we got there all the seats were taken, so we just stood behind the benches with everyone else who showed up late. The sun was blazing by this point, and I was glad I had my wide-brimmed hat and long-sleeve shirt. Even protected from the sun as we were, though, HJ was already starting to show signs of heat exhaustion. Still, when the geyser finally went off, we enjoyed the show with everyone else. I think it lasted for a little over a minute before it started to die down and the crowds started to disperse.

This was the second “hit” of our itinerary for the day. I’ll be honest—it was certainly fun to watch, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive as I thought it was going to be. Maybe it was the oppressive heat, maybe it was the fact that Old Faithful is already so famous. It felt a little bit like seeing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. I remember waiting in a line of people to see the famous painting, and when it was finally my turn to stand in front of it for a few seconds, I thought: “Yup. That’s the Mona Lisa.” And that was it. I honestly felt nothing. No, that’s not right; I felt disappointed. I won’t say that my experience with Old Faithful was on the same level, but it did feel a little underwhelming.

(Incidentally—and this has nothing to do with Yellowstone—I was watching a documentary recently and learned that one of the reasons why the Mona Lisa is so famous (besides the fact that it is a Da Vinci) is that it was stolen in 1911 by an Italian who thought the painting belonged in Italy. I somehow never knew that, but it makes a lot of sense; the Mona Lisa is a nice painting, I guess, but I never really understood why people made such a big deal of it. There—I have outed myself as an art heathen.)

From Old Faithful, we drove on east (crossing the continental divide twice) until we reached West Thumb, a bay off the west end of Yellowstone Lake. There is a boardwalk around this area as well, encircling a small basin filled with milky blue pools like this one. I believe the white patches on the surface are silica deposits, but I could be wrong about that—they are minerals of some sort, at any rate.

The eastern end of the boardwalk takes you along the water’s edge, where you can see the lake itself and features like this, called (among other things) Fishing Cone. In the early twentieth century, this was an active geyser, but now it has gone dormant and is just a hot spring. When the water is high in spring, the cone can be submerged beneath the waters of the lake; now, in summer, the waters are a little lower.

The waters beyond Fishing Cone are West Thumb. But this isn’t just a typical bay off the main lake; if you look at the map, you’ll see it has a rather odd shape. It is also significantly deeper than the rest of the lake, which has led researchers to conclude that it is the result of a massive volcanic explosion that occurred about 125,000 years ago. The whole area is still geothermally active; other springs besides Fishing Cone bubble up from the lake bed melt and the ice in winter, creating natural fishing holes for otters.

This is Abyss Pool, with West Thumb in the background. You can see from this picture that it’s pretty deep; what you can’t see is that it goes down sixteen meters (53 feet) and is one of the deepest springs in the park. It’s actually a little dizzying to stand next to this pool on the boardwalk you can see at the right edge of this photo. The blue water is crystal clear and shimmering, and gazing into the depths is somehow unsettling. At least it was for me. I did not know at the time, when I was staring into its depths, that this pool took the life of a 70-year-old man in 2022—a death that was only discovered nearly three weeks after the fact when a shoe with a foot inside was found in the waters. Apparently the acidic water had entirely dissolved his body, leaving a greasy sheen on the surface of the water; the foot remained because it was protected by the shoe. Sorry for the grizzly tale, but again: Yellowstone can be deadly if you don’t respect it.

From West Thumb, we drove north along the shore of the lake, and by this point HJ was fully knocked out by the heat (and, as we realized later, the altitude). After we passed Lake Village, where the Yellowstone River flows out of the lake, we followed the river north toward Canyon Village. I stopped the car not long after we had left the lake behind when I saw we could make our way down to the river. Here, HJ is splashing herself with some cool water to help with the heat. We both splashed our faces and necks with water to cool down, but we also took some time to enjoy the beautiful scenery before driving on.

Not long after the stop in the previous photo, we arrived at the Mud Volcano area. There is a boardwalk that does a circuit past some interesting geothermal features, but it climbs up a fairly steep hill. HJ decided that she didn’t have the energy for it, so she sat on a bench by the parking lot with a parasol to shade her from the sun. I started walking the circuit myself, following the sign that suggested walking clockwise for a slightly easier climb. It wasn’t any steeper than the hill I walk up to get to work every day, but I noticed that I was breathing a little heavier than usual—that’s when I finally realized that altitude was an issue. I wasn’t experiencing any symptoms of altitude sickness or anything like that, but I could tell that the air was just a little thinner. The average altitude in Yellowstone is about 2,400 meters or 8,000 feet above sea level; that’s not too high, but it’s also not nothing.

Anyway, the photo above is of what is known as “Churning Caldron.” (I generally spell that second word as “cauldron,” as I did earlier, but for some reason every feature with “cauldron” in its name in Yellowstone was spelled “caldron” instead. The dictionary lists it as a “variant spelling,” but it still looks weird to me.) It splashes, churns, and roils rather violently, as you may be able to tell from the photo (again, you’ll have to imagine the crashing and splashing sounds). One thing it doesn’t do, though, is boil—it does reach about 75 degrees Celsius, though, so you wouldn’t want to go for a dip in it.

Here is the view from the highest point on the boardwalk; the section you can see on the left is still ahead of me, and beyond that is a long and steep staircase. I passed quite a few people huffing and puffing their way up the stairs, and I tried to offer them encouragement. “You’re almost there! Only a little farther to go!” To myself, though, I was wondering: “Didn’t they read the signs saying that the clockwise direction was the easier walk?” Two women that I passed not far from the top thanked me for my encouragement but decided that they couldn’t make it and began to walk slowly back down.

Back at the bottom, I visited the eponymous Mud Volcano, which you can see here. You may have also noticed the big, fluffy cow chilling next to the mudpot. It is rather close, but there is a fence between us that you can’t see. Not that a fence alone would have been enough to make me feel safe; bison can easily clear fences if they so desire. But there was also a park ranger standing there talking to a group of people, and neither the ranger nor the bison seemed to be the least bit uncomfortable with the arrangement. I took a look at the crowd of people, determined that I could probably run faster than most (if not all) of them, and decided to approach the fence to get this shot. Then I quickly returned to collect HJ from her bench.

Oh, the “fluffy cow” thing is a little joke, by the way. In the town of West Yellowstone itself, you see a lot of shops selling T-shirts with phrases like “Don’t pet the fluffy cows” on them. This is sound advice, although I have to wonder who goes around petting cows. If I had to come up with a funny name for bison, I would probably go with “cardigan cows.” You should be able to tell why from this photo.

Just north of Mud Volcano is the Hayden Valley, which stretches west from the Yellowstone River (seen here in the distance). The valley is a favorite habitat of bison, and here you can see them dotting the grassy plains. This, for those of you who were wondering, is probably the safest distance from which to view bison. Seeing them up close (although not too close) is certainly awe-inspiring, but scattered herds of bison on the plains are majestic as well. There used to be tens of millions of bison roaming across North America, and I can only imagine what the Hayden Valley must have looked like then.

So, what happened to them? Well, there were a lot of factors that led to their decline, some of them the inevitable result of progress. But perhaps the saddest factor was a deliberate campaign of extermination by the army, as they knew how vital the bison were to the various native tribes on the Great Plains. According to the Buffalo Field Campaign, that slaughter continues to this day; they claim that this is done at the behest of the cattle industry, while the government claims that it is done to prevent the spread of disease (among other reasons). I don’t know enough to pass judgment and say which side is right and which side is wrong—and I suspect it’s probably more complicated than that, anyway—I was just surprised to learn that so many bison are still being killed.

HJ slept for most of the ride through the Hayden Valley, after which we reached the Canyon Village area. This is named for what is known as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, a deep canyon formed by the river as it runs north from the lake. It’s not anywhere as deep as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, of course, but it is still quite impressive. According to a sign we saw along the way, it has a depth of 800-1.200 feet, a width of 1.500-4.000 feet, and a length of twenty-four miles (only a few miles of which are covered by the rim drives). We drove the South Rim Drive and stopped at a few points along the way. This is a shot of the Upper Falls plunging over a precipice into the canyon.

It is sixty-five kilometers (forty miles) from Canyon Village back to the West Entrance, and HJ slept the entire way back; she was absolutely knocked out by the combination of heat and altitude. I enjoyed the scenery as I drove, but it had been a long and hot day, and I, too, was looking forward to getting back to the hotel.

Day two in the park was the “Grand Canyon” itinerary. We were at the park entrance at six o’clock, an hour earlier than on our first day. This was more to avoid the heat than it was to avoid the crowds, but it had the effect of helping with both. We drove into the park and made a left at Madison in order to travel clockwise around the lower loop. We stopped at Beryl Spring and the Artists Paintpots, but the above photograph is from the Norris Geyser Basin, which is a little farther on. There are two circular boardwalks here: the smaller Porcelain Basin and the larger Back Basin. Since our main objective for the day was to do the North Rim Drive of the Grand Canyon, we elected to do the Porcelain Basin, which seemed to be more popular anyway. It is a very active area, with a lot of hot springs, small geysers, and some fumaroles as well. This last is the fourth type of thermal feature in Yellowstone—basically a dry vent that blows out clouds of steam. The really active ones make a tremendous howling sound that might be mistaken for a jet engine or a freight train.

After touring the Porcelain Basin, we returned to the parking lot, had a bit of breakfast, and then drove on to Canyon Village and the North Rim Drive. The first stop there is a switchback trail that leads down to the brink of the Lower Falls, which you can see cascading over the edge in this photo. It’s not quite at the level of, say, Niagara Falls, but it is always an experience to stand next to a waterfall and watch the water rushing past, going from a dark green to a white foam as it hits the brink. The trail down isn’t too long, but it does wind back and forth quite a bit, so you trade steepness for distance (it drops 180 meters over a distance of 600 meters, meaning that it has an average grade of .3 or 30%). It wasn’t too late by this point, but it was late enough for the sun to be quite warm; fortunately, much of the trail is shaded by trees, so it wasn’t too bad of a hike.

Continuing on along the one-way drive, you reach two lookouts in relatively quick succession: Lookout Point first, followed by Grand View. This photo was taken from Lookout Point, if I remember correctly; the views are similar, but Lookout Point gives you a better view of the Lower Falls. Near the bottom of this photo, just left of center, you can see a reddish rock sticking up; the color here is apparently the result of iron compounds in the rock.

A little over a kilometer on from Grand View, there is a turnoff on the right that leads another kilometer or so down to Inspiration Point. We stopped here to gain some inspiration and to take this photo, among others. It was quite warm by now, and as we walked along the trail there, we were pleasantly surprised to find a bench made from large rocks. That might not sound like the most comfortable thing, but it was entirely in the shade, which meant the rocks were quite chilly. It was like our own little icebox, and we sat there for a while to cool down.

When we finished the North Rim Drive loop, we made a quick toilet stop at the service station at the Canyon Village intersection, looked at the rather ridiculous gas prices, and then drove back to the park entrance the way we had come in. On the road past Madison, we stopped at the Madison River opposite Mount Haynes (which you can’t actually see in this photo). We walked along the bank until we found a nice spot where we could dip our feet into the water. We sat there for a little while, letting the cool, clear water run over our feet and refresh us. Here you can see HJ walking on ahead looking for a spot as I lag behind, admiring the scenery. Yes, I was picturing where I would put a little cabin here, too.

This photo was not taken in the park itself, but in the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone. We left the park early, before the worst of the heat, and had lunch at a place not too far from our hotel. Then we walked down to the Discovery Center; it wasn’t far, but if I had realized how open and desolate the walk was going to be, I probably would have just driven. At any rate, as you can probably tell from the name, the GWDC is best known for its grizzly bears and wolves. They have other animals here as well, including some ground squirrels. They’re not the flashiest or most exciting of the wildlife that you might see in the park, but they are cute. I’m including this photograph, though, because this little guy, stretched out in the shade of the log like a little log himself, is just so done with the sun and heat. People talk about having “spirit animals”; in that moment, as I stood there watching a couple of the other squirrels skittering back and forth in the blazing sun, I knew that this guy was my spirit animal. I see you, knackered little ground squirrel. I see you.

There is also a raptor section, which houses not tiny, vicious dinosaurs but birds of prey—including this majestic bald eagle. I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen a bald eagle in person before, and I don’t think I have, at least not his close. I did initially wonder about the ethics of keeping animals like this in the center, but as I read the information plaques by each of the exhibits, I realized that all the birds (and other animals) were rescues. If possible, rescued animals are returned to the wild, but often this is not possible, whether because the animal has some injury that would prevent them from surviving or because they just haven’t developed the abilities needed to survive. I suppose you could say that we should return these animals to the wild anyway and let nature take its course, and there is something to that logic, but if you can provide a reasonably good environment for an animal, might it be morally acceptable to keep them in captivity? I’m not going to provide a definitive answer to that question; I’m sure reasonable people could disagree on it. I will say that I appreciated the opportunity to see a bald eagle up close, though.

And here are the stars of the show, or two of them, at least. Grizzly bears are generally solitary in the wild, but these two bears are sisters; that is Condi on the left and Seeley on the right. The information panel near the enclosure relates their story in brief, but we were lucky enough to hear a staffer tell the tale in more detail. Condi and Seeley were born in the wild, along with another cub, in 2019 near Condon in northwest Montana. Their mother took them out to teach them how to hunt, forage, and otherwise secure food, but they soon discovered that areas inhabited by human beings were easy pickings. It began with the raiding of garbage cans and escalated to barns and chicken coops. With each success, the bears grew bolder, but they ultimately crossed a line when they started breaking into houses to steal food from kitchens. Wildlife officials were called in, and they captured Condi and Seeley, along with her mother (the third cub was never captured). By this point, there was no hope of keeping the animals wild, so the mother was put down and the two cubs were relocated to the GWDC.

None of the incidents were reported until the bears started breaking into homes because people were afraid of what might happen to the bears if they reported them. The tragic irony is that this essentially sealed the bears’ fate; had the first incidents been reported, wildlife officials might have succeeded in keeping the animals wild. Condi and Seeley seem to be living a fairly comfortable life at the center, but it would have been far better for them had they been able to remain in the wild and had their mother not been euthanized. So, while it is certainly cool to be able to see grizzly bears this close—I would not want to be anywhere near this close to a grizzly in the wild—it is also sad to see.

Speaking of garbage cans, there is an area of the center near the exit that displays a collection of garbage receptacles and other containers (like coolers) that have been tested to see if they are bear-proof. Put it this way: If it’s not made of metal and not built like a tank, it isn’t going to survive a grizzly. This explains why all of the bins in Yellowstone are built like clothes drop-offs—large, sturdy metal boxes with a metal tray that swings open to block the opening and then deposit the trash in the bin once it is closed.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why there are no photographs of the wolves, this is because the wolves were smart and stayed out of the blazing sun. We did see two white wolves resting in shaded tall grass beneath a tree, but it was hard to get a good picture of them. I did watch them for a while, and at one point one of the wolves raised its head slightly and looked at me as if to say, “What are you doing, you crazy human? Go away.”

Day three’s itinerary was the “Gardiner Expedition,” as our ultimate destination was the small town of Gardiner (and parts north) beyond the north entrance of the park. In order to get there, we needed to take a left at Madison and head toward Norris, as we had done the previous day. We didn’t stop along the way, so it was still quite early when we reached the Norris Geyser Basin. We decided to do the Back Basin walk, which circumscribes a much larger circle than Porcelain Basin. We ended up walking a lot more than we intended to, as a small section of the boardwalk was closed off for repairs, forcing us to walk back the way we had come and then walk up the other arm to see everything.

In the above photo is the Steamboat Geyser, sending up billowing clouds of steam in the morning sun. It is the world’s tallest active geyser (there is a geyser in New Zealand that has shot water higher, but not in the last hundred years), topping out at over 300 feet. This is about two to three times the height of Old Faithful, but unlike its famous cousin it is very unpredictable—so much so that a sign nearby actually labels it “Old Unpredictable.” Apparently, eruptions can occur anywhere from four days apart to fifty years apart. The last eruption was at the end of February this year, but we have no idea when it will erupt next (you’ll notice that the page I linked to above for geyser eruption predictions has no prediction for Steamboat). When it does erupt, it drains the nearby Cistern Pool spring and can continue to belch steam for hours to days after. The reason there is so much steam here is that it is still early in the morning and quite cool, causing the moisture in the warm air emerging from the geyser to condense. This is a pretty common phenomenon in the park; geothermal features that are covered in steam and fog in the morning will be clear in the heat of the day later on. Seeing huge pillars of steam rising from the landscape is very impressive, though, and yet another reason to hit the park early.

This is the boardwalk at the farthest point out in the Back Basin. You might think that it looks pretty safe to go traipsing off piste and exploring the barren landscape, but I was not the least bit tempted. You will occasionally see hats lying on the ground, having been blown off of visitors’ heads in the winds that will sometimes come ripping through; they’re still there because their owners wisely decided not to retrieve them. Eventually, though, a park ranger will have to remove the items, so try to hold on to your hat. My wide-brimmed hat has a chin strap that I usually don’t like to wear, but I made sure it was fastened when I was out in open areas like this.

This is one of those “story” photos that might not be impressive in and of itself. What you see here is Minute Geyser, so called because it used to erupt once every minute. “Used to” is the key phrase here, though. I’ll reproduce the text of the sign here to explain why.

Minute Geyser’s eruptions have changed dramatically. Its larger west vent (right) is clogged with rocks tossed in by early visitors when the park’s main road was near this trail—passing within 70 feet (21 meters) of the geyser. Minute once erupted every 60 seconds, sometimes to heights of 40 to 50 feet (12 to 15 meters). Eruptions now are irregular and originate from its smaller east vent. Removal of the west vent’s mineral-cemented rocks would require the use of heavy equipment, resulting in severe damage

Thermal features are not trash cans or wishing wells—they are among earth’s rarest geologic treasures. Please do your part to protect them and report any vandalism to a park ranger.

There is an old photo on the right of the information panel that shows the geyser erupting, with the following caption below:

Minute Geyser and park visitors, 1948. Minute Geyser’s destruction stands today as a sad reminder of thoughtless visitor behavior.

The top of the panel, giving the name of the geyser, has the subtitle: “Choked by Ignorance.” I guess this is accurate; early visitors maybe didn’t know that throwing rocks into a geyser would ultimately destroy it. Still, “ignorance” feels like a charitable assessment of such behavior. I would like to think that people don’t do this anymore... but if they didn’t, we probably wouldn’t need information panels like this.

When we finished our tour of the Back Basin, we again had a little bit of breakfast, as we had done the day before. Then it was off north into uncharted territory. Well, I suppose it has been fully charted, but it was new to us. We drove by Roaring Mountain, a hillside riddled with fumaroles spewing steam into the air, especially at that early hour (when we passed by on the way home later that afternoon, the hillside looked a lot less dramatic with no steam at all). A little farther on was a pullout for Obsidian Cliff, which you can see at the end of a short walk. The view of the cliff didn’t end up being all that impressive, but we did get to walk through some interesting landscape. We followed one trail along a stream for a while, hoping to see some wildlife. It soon turned marshy, though, and the only wildlife we saw were swarms of midges that harassed us until we turned around and went back to our car.

The terrain grows more and more rugged as you drive north from Norris, eventually leading to this dramatic section of road that hugs the cliff face. The cliff drops off into the Golden Gate Canyon, after which this area is named. One feature of this road is a pillar of rock that still stands to this day, forming a gateway through which the road runs; if you take a closer look at the larger version of this photo, you should be able to make out the pillar in the distance, just beyond the car that is rounding the bend and about to disappear out of sight.

The first road here was built in 1885, when engineers were building the first roads through the park; this area in particular was said to pose one of the most difficult (and expensive) challenges to those early builders. 14,000 cubic yards (about 10700 cubic meters) of rock needed to be removed to build the road, requiring 1,275 pounds (about 580 kg) of explosives to blast it loose. The first road they built was made of wooden planks atop a wooden trestle, but by 1900 it was deemed to be unsafe. They rebuilt the bridge then with new materials, and again in 1933 and 1977; this last bridge has lasted the longest, carrying visitors to the park safely for nearly half a century now.

And here we are at Mammoth Hot Springs, perhaps the area of the park I was most looking forward to seeing. We were already well into the heat of the day by this point, but it was still before noon. Our original plan had been to drive the Upper Terrace Drive and then walk the boardwalks of the Lower Terraces, but we figured that we should reverse that order and do our walking before it got even hotter. We walked down to Canary Spring, and I was struck by this nearby landscape of blackened trees and bone-white travertine terraces. The latter are the fifth (and final) type of thermal feature you will see in Yellowstone. They are formed when springs bubble up through limestone, dissolving the calcium carbonate and depositing it in cascading terraces. I took more photos here than I did anywhere else in the park (or on our whole trip, for that matter), so get ready for a few photos of the area.

You will often see dead trees standing like stark skeletons in geothermal areas, but these trees are blackened as if from soot. That, and the ash-gray color of the ground beneath them, leads me to wonder if there was a fire here at some point. If there was, it left the trees next to the boardwalk we were on untouched—either that, or the fire happened a long time ago and the living trees had time to regenerate, while these trees remain preserved in their burned state. I honestly don’t know.

Here we are on one of the upper boardwalks (north of where the previous photo was taken) looking down over the Lower Terraces and to the built-up area of Mammoth beyond. The park headquarters are located here, along with lodging, a visitors center, and other amenities. We had met a couple elsewhere in the park who said they were staying at the hotel here. I was curious, so while writing this entry I decided to see how much the hotel was per night. Some of the other accommodations in the park, such as those located around the lake or at Old Faithful, are over $300 a night, but I was surprised to see that rooms at Mammoth are only $165 throughout the summer. That’s not a bad deal at all, considering how expensive accommodation around the park is. I don’t regret staying in West Yellowstone this time, as we had access to good restaurants, cheaper gas, etc., but it’s something to think about if we ever come back.

You didn’t think I was going to leave you without a closer shot of the terraces in the previous photo, did you? This is New Blue Spring, a name that seems self-explanatory. I was mesmerized by the delicate, pale blue of some of the pools and the deep ocher and orange of the mineral-rich, thermophile-laden rocks. This is iconic Yellowstone for me, the sort of thing I think of when I think of geothermal activity. HJ did express some disappointment that there wasn’t more water in the springs; she said that it would have looked even more impressive had there been cascades of water flowing down, and I can’t help but agree. Still, though, I thought the intricate natural designs of the terraces were fascinating.

Here is a shot farther down looking back up, where you can see more of the delicate “architecture” of the terraces—you’ll definitely want to check out the larger version of this photo for more detail. These are the Cleopatra Terraces (or near them, at least). The orange terraces in the rear right sprinkled with white travertine reminded me of frosted cakes, while the flowing mounds of brownish minerals in the foreground left made me think of a chocolate sundae. I might have also just been getting a little hungry by this point.

Here is a shot of the Jupiter Terraces, which you can see have been dry for quite some time. This is another “story” photo; it’s not the prettiest shot of the terraces at Mammoth, but it tells the story of the area. One hundred years ago, water flowed freely down these slopes, and the terraces supported colorful pools like the ones you saw at New Blue Spring above. Toward the end of the twentieth century, though, the spring went dormant, and it has been silent since then. With the water dried up and no new deposits of calcium carbonate forming, the travertine has begun to crack and crumble (look at the large version for more detail). Eventually, if the spring doesn’t come back to life, soil will form here, allowing plants to colonize the area again. In the area around Mammoth Hot Springs, huge deposits of travertine have been found buried beneath the soil, showing that this process has been going on for millennia.

As I stood here starting up at the cracking terraces, a memory came bubbling to the surface—a story that I feel like I have told here before. Years ago, as part of a team of journalists, I traveled down to Haeinsa, a temple in South Gyeongsang Province that is probably most famous as the repository for the Tripitaka Koreana, a collection of 80,000 wood blocks of Buddhist scriptures. There, we met the relatively young monk who had been appointed caretaker of the wood-block collection. I had the chance to interview him in private, ostensibly to write an article about the Tripitaka. I say “ostensibly” because, as we talked, the interview quickly went off the rails. Before I knew it, I was confiding to this monk my apprehension about upcoming events in my life. He asked me why I was apprehensive, and I said, “I guess I’m just afraid that things will change.” He just smiled and said, “But life is change.” Not that change is inevitable in life, but that life is change.

It’s such a simple and obvious thing, but I remember being struck speechless at the time. Life is change. We work so hard to reach milestones, those places in our lives where we think we will be happy, and then we want to stay there, but you can’t stop the wheel of change. No matter how hard you try, you can’t ever keep things just the way they are. Change means growth. Change also means decay. Both are part of the eternal cycle of life and death. This was brought home to me some time after my interview with this monk. My phone buzzed, and I saw that my editor at the magazine had sent me a photo of a raging fire. I was confused at first, but I looked closer and recognized it as a Buddhist funeral pyre. I felt a sudden chill, and then the text followed: The monk had died in a car accident. I was stunned, but I heard his voice in my head: “Life is change.” He left us earlier than he should have—at least, that is what the selfish part of me thinks—but all of us will eventually return to nature, just as he did. Just as the Jupiter Terraces are now deteriorating, to be eventually reclaimed by the land.

As we returned to our car in the parking lot above the Lower Terraces, we passed this strange rock formation and were stopped dead in our tracks. It looks for all the world like a giant reached into the rock and bent it into this shape. Rock is not supposed to bend. We think of rock as something solid, something unmoving and unmovable. But even rock can be bent, twisted, and shaped by great forces, depending on its state. Perhaps because I was already in a philosophical mood after witnessing the Jupiter Terraces, I drew a lesson from this sight as well: No matter how solid and permanent we think something might be, it has been and may still be shaped by forces that are beyond our experience, if not beyond our comprehension. And there are some forces so great that we are powerless before them; we can only look on in awe and hope that we will escape unscathed.

I will try to be a little more grounded about this photo, but it is hard not to wax philosophical when you come face-to-face with the great forces of the earth. This is another example of those forces. It is called Liberty Cap, and when I first saw it I thought it might be the result of erosion. A second look, however, shows that it is not nearly sturdy and solid enough to survive the erosion of everything else around it. In fact, this is not the result of stone being eroded away but of stone accumulating. There was once a hot spring here that had enough pressure to continue depositing minerals until the structure reached eleven meters (thirty-seven feet); this process is thought to have taken hundreds of years. It was given its name in 1871 because of a resemblance to caps worn during the French Revolution as a symbol of liberty. That being the case, it might have been better named “Bonnet Rouge,” but I suppose Liberty Cap will suffice.

And here is one final photo of the terraces, this time from Palette Spring near the base of the Lower Terraces. You can see more of the curtain-like formations beneath the travertine terraces, but I like how they are set off here by the reddish-brown bulbous structures, which remind me very much of pumpkins. Speaking of which, it was definitely time for lunch now, and we found a picnic table in the shade on the other side of the road from the terraces. I actually took this photograph while HJ was waiting at the shady table; I came back to find her asleep as she sat there. This would be the end of our adventures in the park for day three. We had our lunch, relaxed for a bit in the relative cool of the shade, and then returned to our car to make the short drive north to Gardiner.

Every part of the park offers new vistas, and the short road from Mammoth Hot Springs to the North Entrance is no exception. The northern range stretches out here for miles, and I stopped at a pullout along the way to capture it in this photograph. This one is a little different from every other photo in this essay—clicking on this one will take you not to a larger photo of the same ratio (3:2), but to a 9:2 panorama that is only slightly taller but much wider. As a panorama taken in camera, it’s not quite as good quality as the other photos, but hopefully it will give you a sense of the vastness of the landscape and maybe convey a little bit of what I felt as I stood there looking out at it.

We made it to Gardiner shortly thereafter. Just outside the small town is the Roosevelt Arch, the original entrance to the park. On the other side, above the arch, visible to visitors entering the park, is a stone plaque reading “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” This phrase comes from remarks delivered by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, when the cornerstone was laid for the gateway arch. Here is some context for that quote:

This Park was created, and is now administered, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. ...already its beauties can be seen with great comfort in a short space of time and at an astoundingly small cost, and with the sense on the part of every visitor that it is in part his property, that it is the property of Uncle Sam and therefore of all of us. The only way that the people as a whole can secure to themselves and their children the enjoyment in perpetuity of what the Yellowstone Park has to give is by assuming the ownership in the name of the nation and by jealously safeguarding and preserving the scenery, the forests, and the wild creatures.

Kind of makes you think about Minute Geyser again, doesn’t it? If only everyone felt the same sense of ownership—with the accompanying sense of responsibility—for the great resources of the land. If you want even more context, read the rest of President Roosevelt’s remarks.

Once in Gardiner, we filled up the car with gas (it was cheaper there than in West Yellowstone) and then headed north along 89 to the Yellowstone Hot Springs resort. As I mentioned in my write-up, we spent a while there, jumping back and forth between the cold, river-fed pool and the hot pool fed from a local hot spring. We did take some photos here, but we took them with our underwater camera, so I decided not to include them in this photo essay.

For our final day, we were originally thinking about driving south and visiting Grand Teton National Park, but a number of factors made us decide to stay in Yellowstone. For one, there were still plenty of things we hadn’t seen in the park. Secondly, Grand Teton is a different park and thus requires another entrance fee, and we would only be able to spend a day there (not to mention the fact that it would probably take us nearly two hours just to drive to the entrance). Finally, the weather was supposed to be cloudy and cool, and thus probably not the best day to view the sweeping vistas of Grand Teton. It would make traveling around Yellowstone much less taxing if we didn’t have to deal with the blazing sun, though.

So, with that decision made, we showed up at the park at six o’clock again for our final itinerary: “Cascades and Critters.” We had seen the Upper and Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon, but there were a lot of other falls that we had just driven right by. We had also seen a lot of wildlife, but we thought we might have a chance to see more wildlife on a cooler day. The photo above is Gibbon Falls, a relatively shallow, ribbon-like cascade in the Gibbon River north of Madison. There is a walkway along the edge of the gorge with good views of the river and falls below.

We have skipped ahead quite a bit in this photo; we are already on the other side of the lower loop between Canyon Village and Lake Village, in Hayden Valley. This is a major habitat for bison in the park, but only the strongest bison can survive the harsh winters here. Bison that are not quite strong or fat enough may travel down to lower elevations in search of food, returning to the valley in the spring.

We saw a lot of bison in the valley, but I’m including this picture to give you an idea of what a Yellowstone traffic jam can look like. What do you do when you’re driving down the road and you see a bison lumbering toward you? You stop, wait patiently, and hope the bison continues to walk on by. You do not get out of your car. We actually had two bison walk in front of our car during on our final day, but I was driving, so I wasn’t able to get any photographs. Actually, I did manage to grab my camera and snap one shot of a buffalo just as he reached the other side of the road, but it’s not as dramatic or interesting as this photo, which I took from a small rest area.

When we encountered bison while driving, though, mostly I was just concerned with staying very still and quietly waiting for the bison to pass. The first time it happened, the animal walked down the middle of the road almost right past my window. I just sat there, frozen and in awe of the creature’s massive size. When it reached the car ahead of us, it turned toward that car; for a moment we thought it was going to ram them. Fortunately, it very calmly walked in front of the car and into the woods on the other side. I remember wondering how I would have felt if I had been in that car and seen a bison walk right in front of us.

Well, I didn’t have to wonder for long, because the next time we saw a bison on the road, that is exactly what happened. HJ and I just sat there very still but giggling out of sheer nervousness (and possibly terror) until the animal left the road. I waited until it was well clear of the road before I very slowly resumed our journey.

Another “story” photo, this time from near Sulfur Caldron at the southern end of the valley. I have photographs of the ca(u)ldron itself, but they are mostly obscured by the huge clouds of steam that rose up from it, and this photo is more interesting anyway. As you might be able to tell, it is part of the paved parking area nearby—but a hot spring has bubbled up from beneath the surface and collapsed the pavement. Again: Nothing is permanent here. You never know when things might shift and what was once a parking lot might become a hot spring.

We drove on a little farther to Mud Volcano before turning around, but we also got out and walked around the boardwalk. I had already toured the area on our first day, which you saw above, but HJ hadn’t; I wanted her to have the opportunity to see the features there as well. We then turned around and drove north, passing Canyon Village and driving into previously unexplored territory: the road north to Tower-Roosevelt.

Along that road is a hiking/biking trail that goes up to the summit of Mount Washburn, at 3122 meters. This is not that summit, of course; we walked only about ten minutes up the trail to see what there was to see, and the views were quite beautiful indeed, with wildflowers carpeting the hillsides. But mountain trails were not on our itinerary, and I also suddenly remembered that we had no bear spray, so after ten minutes we turned around and made our way back down to the car. When we do eventually come back to Yellowstone, I definitely want to do more actual hiking.

This is Tower Fall, which gives its name to half of the Tower-Roosevelt area (the other half comes from the Roosevelt Lodge). The fall drops forty meters over a ledge of volcanic rock, and the pinnacles of rock at the brink give the fall its name. If you look to the right of the brink and slightly up, you should be able to see the most prominent of those pinnacles, although it does blend into the background a little; there are other pinnacles behind the fall against the cliff face. The fall is constantly migrating upstream ever so slowly as the roiling water at the base undercuts and erodes the rock.

From the Tower-Roosevelt junction we turned east on the road toward the Northeast Entrance, along which is the Lamar Valley. There was construction on the bridge over the Yellowstone River that caused quite the backup, and for a little while I was regretting taking the turnoff and sitting in a long line of cars. In the end, though, we didn’t have to wait for that long, and the Lamar Valley turned out to be another great place to see wildlife. Here you can see one of the six pronghorns we ended up spotting, just chilling here in the valley and staring at me as I took this photograph. The Lamar Valley was also where we saw the nesting osprey, among other animals; on the way back we stopped by the Lamar River to skip stones in the wide, flowing waters.

I gave a tally of all the wildlife we saw on our final day in my write-up, but I’ll repeat it here so you don’t have to go looking for it: “hundreds of bison (including two that walked directly in front of our car), numerous geese and squirrels, six pronghorns, four mule deer (one a mature male with an impressive set of antlers), two black bears, two elk, two osprey, and one curious ground squirrel that kept popping in and out of its burrow to check on us as we ate our lunch nearby.”

To elaborate a bit on the black bears, the first bear we saw was a cub climbing a tree in a wooded area; he was rather far away and hard to see. I did shoot a pic of him at max zoom, but even then you can’t really see him very well. This was yet another one of those times I regretted not having an essential piece of kit for our trip: a pair of binoculars. This is something we will definitely be packing when we come back.

The second bear, though, we encountered in a rather unexpected area: a wide open grassland with no woods around for miles. There was a line of cars stopped in the road, and I figured it was people looking at deer or bison. As we got closer, though, HJ exclaimed, “It’s a bear!” I was surprised, as this wasn’t the sort of place you would normally see a bear. We pulled over to the side of the road to watch it lumber by through the grass on the other side. There was a hillock on that side that it passed behind, and a young girl (she looked to be in her early teens) got out of a car to go stand on the hillock and watch the bear walk by—just yards away from where she was standing. I wanted to yell at her to get back into the car, but I didn’t want to startle the bear, either. Yes, it was a black bear, and those aren’t generally very aggressive, but it’s still a bear. As I noted above, you’re supposed to keep a distance of a hundred yards from bears in the park. Unable to do anything, I just bit my tongue and marveled at the girl’s foolhardiness and the astonishing lack of concern from her parents, who I assume were waiting in the car. Then again, perhaps they were reacting the same way I was: watching in quiet fearfulness and hoping that their reckless daughter wasn’t about to become bear food. Anyway, I think I’ve banged on enough about how you need to be careful in the park and respect nature, so we’ll move on now to the last photo.

This is the Petrified Tree, a short distance west of the Tower-Roosevelt junction. Apparently there used to be three, before “thoughtless souvenir-hunters chipped away the other two.” That’s from the information panel (are we seeing a theme?). Those two trees were still there in 1947, at least, so it was in the second half of the twentieth century that they were destroyed.

Even though only a short section of the tree stands today, this is actually the petrified remains of a redwood—anatomically identical to the redwoods found in California today. The redwoods in Yellowstone are signs that the park was once a subtropical environment. A series of volcanic eruptions some fifty million years ago buried the trees, and the silica in the ashy flow encased the living cells of the trees, preventing oxygen from getting to them, which in turn prevented them from rotting. Over time, minerals replaced the organic matter in the tree and turned it to stone.

From the Petrified Tree, we continued west along the northern range, enjoying yet more unique scenery. When we arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs we had finally completed the figure-eight of the main roads in the park. We then made the long drive back to the West Entrance, stopping along the way to do the Madison River Drive. This drive is not on the official map, but I had passed by it on each of the three previous days, so on the last day I made sure to take the turn-off. We dipped our feet into the river one final time as a farewell to the park and then drove back to our hotel. We had spent eleven-and-a-half hours in the park, and it ended up being HJ’s favorite day—she had finally recovered from the combination of heat and altitude and was able to fully enjoy herself in the relative coolness of that last cloudy day.

And that wraps up the second of three photo essays covering our trip. This one took longer than I expected, partly because there were more photos, but also because I’ve had a lot of busy evenings. The last essay will be the shortest, with only 21 photos, but I’m not sure when I will be able to get it out, as I will be away this weekend. I will try to get it out before the start of the semester, though, as that is when things will really start to get busy.