1998 Northern Rockies Trip

Text on back of postcard:
BISCUIT BASIN
Yellowstone National Park

My note to recipient:
See that blue sky? Not for us! At least not since the first day.
Rain yesterday and snow today. We shifted the tents to a location
between some trees and slun the tarp over some ropes to add extra cover.
It worked well, but it was so cold that we had extra-added condensation
inside the tent walls. Gotta figure out a solution for that...
Saw Biscuit Basin in the rain yesterday.

If you see white-ish streaks, that's the snow falling.

Yep. Apparently steph's tent floor got a puncture large enough to take on a fair amount of water the first night. The tent was sitting on the tarp the first night collecting rain water. sigh

The Green Dragon Pool

Subrata looks into the fog over a thermal pool by the road

Looking down into one of the many thermal basins.

I had visited Yellowstone briefly one fall nearly twenty years before. The regularity of Old Faithful had degraded over that time as had the relative activity of the various paint pot and mud pot features, so some of that was a little disappointing for me. On the other hand, I got to spend a lot more time and see a lot more features this time around, so I was more than happy to be there and would have been ecstatic to stay and wander and look for at least another week! I hope to go to Yellowstone again at least two more times: once in winter and once in summer. Fall was great with the fall color, the rutting elk, the highly-visible fumaroles, and the usual features. Early spring was great with the fresh greening, a few spring wildflowers, the highly-visible fumaroles, and the usual features. I'd like to see it in summer because the cold weather makes the thermal features are frequently hidden by the fog of steam. I'd like to see it in winter cloaked in snow and be able to watch the resident creatures in that environment.

Specialists can tell you the water temperature at various places by the color of the bacteria, algae, and other growths in the thermal pools.

The river undercuts the surrounding rock walls

Fumaroles are everywhere ...including in the flats!

The yellow stone for which the park is named are readily apparent

A moose grazing in a wet meadow

From Mark's "Book of Doom":
Day 7: Friday, May 22nd
Woke up to light snow today. Snow continued for most of the day. We looked at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the falls on the Yellowstone River. We finished off out tour of the southern part of the park today, including some thermal areas we missed earlier.

I'm really glad I bought a new jacked here. I would have been really cold in just my jean jacket. Buying some new clothes has been part of the plan all along, of course.

We ate cafeteria food at Old Faithful today, under the assumption that our campsite would be covered in snow. Imagine our surprise to find our campsite dry, and relatively temperate. I guess the snow followed us around all day.

Tomorrow: good bye Yellowstone, hello big sky country!

Touring the park with its fresh spring snowfall let us see almost an entirely different park! Yes, when we first arrived there were patches and whole areas of snow, but it was gone from the trees. Today it was almost a winter wonderland! The thermal pools on previous days had a little steam fog around them, but little gusts of wind were helping to chase the fog away for short periods. With the cold of the snow and almost no wind, you could tell where the thermals were, but you couldn't see them because they were encased in fog.

This view had no snow yesterday!

Late in the afternoon we went back to the main visitors' center/lodge and did some shopping. Since we were right there with the cafeteria and had been battling snow flurries all day, we wimped-out and ate food prepared by someone else in a heated edifice. As it turned out, our camp was either at a lower altitude or in some sort of pocket such that it had hardly rained or snowed.

Yellow-Bellied Marmot

Another moose!

An elk grazing in the meadow

A small bachelor herd of bison