 A
picture of the Natural Bridge, a little bit closer than mine,
and from the other side. |
 A
golden mantle ground squirrel. Or maybe it's a chipmunk. It's one
of those small cute rodents anyway, eating and enjoying the day in the
geyser basin. |
 Here
we have a larger rodent. This is a marmot, also known as a whistle
pig. At least that is what it looks like, although he looks kind of skinny
for a marmot. See my version of
a marmot. |
 Life
in a hot spring runoff channel. Mats of various kinds of bacteria grow
in the hot water. Different colors grow in different temperatures. The
things that look like grains of rice are the maggots of specialized hot
spring flies that feed on the bacteria. These flies have their own predators
and parasites - sort of a semi-independent weird little ecosystem of its
own. Nature is so cool. You can read about this kind of stuff in
the book Life at High
Temperatures among other places. Compare with one of my algae
pictures. |
 Some
geyser fanatic was sort of complaining a little that I don't have many
geyser pictures in these early picture galleries, so here is one. (see
the geyser rant). this is Grotto Geyser. Grotto
isn't erupting here (but is here and
here) so you can see the weird shape
of the cone. It is thought that there are tree stumps inside this cone,
and that they got covered with silica from the geyser water to form the
cone. I think it looks like Richard Nixon emerging from the ground
when viewed at the right angle. |
 Liberty
Cap, at Mammoth Hot Springs. This formation is made of the travertine deposited
by a now extinct hot spring. It supposedly gets it's name from some sort
of hat that was worn by revolutionaries during the French Revolution. |
 The
Terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs. I don't know exactly which spring this
is, I didn't even take the picture. This shot reminds me a lot of ones
taken during the early exploration of the park, all black and white and
dramatic looking. Jennifer took photography classes and stuff.
I have some images of old photos taken by Jackson from the Library of Congress,
but I don't remember the link to them. Or even better, they are like Ansel
Adams photos. If you happen to have a link to them, let me know,
or add it yourself to the links
page. |
 Morning
Glory Pool, in the Upper Geyser Basin. A very pretty, very hot spring.
Unfortunately, because people have thrown trash in it over the years and
partly plugged it up, it is no longer as hot as it once was, and this has
let cyanobacteria grow farther down into the pool, so it doesn't quite
look like a pure blue morning glory flower anymore. I understand that at
one time it had a scalloped edge to it that has been taken bit by bit for
souvenirs. This spring very rarely erupts as a natural geyser (so there
- see my geyser rant). Sometimes the rangers
can induce it to erupt in order to try and clean out some of the trash
people have thrown in it. I think I read somewhere that a tourist
had his little dog near the pool, illegally of course, and it jumped in,
but I don't think that made it erupt. Sometimes animals falling into
hot springs do make them
erupt. I don't remember where I read about the doggie though,
so it might be an urban legend, so don't quote me on that one. |
 This
is the bridge leading over the Firehole River to the Midway Geyser Basin.
The steam and hot water pouring down into the Firehole River are from Excelsior
Geyser . Excelsior used to be a truly huge geyser in the early days of
the park, with massive wide eruptions 200 or more feet tall, but it doesn't
erupt much anymore. Still the crater is very big and impressive, as are
the big cascades of boiling water going into the river. Many of the springs
in the main part of the Midway Geyser Basin are big, including Grand Prismatic
Spring, the biggest single hot pool in Yellowstone. |
 This
looks like Tower Falls. It got the name from the weird looking spires of
rock above the fall. |