On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
PaulB
This is the second of 3 sets of images of some of the features of Yellowstone National Park. This set includes the Norris Geyser Basin, Mammoth Hot Springs, and the Yellowstone Canyon that gives the park its name.
A couple of elk dining. Elk and buffalo are the easiest animals to spot and photograph, as they are the most plentiful.
The Norris Geyser Basin is a valley packed with multiple geysers, hot springs, mud pits, and colorful water flows. In colder weather, the entire valley can be obscured by the steam rising from the various geothermal features.
I liked the framing of this shot, although I do wish that the steam cloud directly in front had been a bit less.
The Mammoth Hot Springs area somewhat resembles the inside of a colorful cave, and for a similar reason, as the minerals in the heated water have created these amazingly colorful features over a period of centuries.
The various formations in the area are still being created and altered by the flow of the water.
But if the underlying steam and water flow shift away from an area, the area “dies,” with the colors fading over time.
Yellowstone National Park gets its name from the yellow color of the walls of Yellowstone Canyon. The haze in the air in this picture is from wildfire smoke, from fires everywhere around (but, thankfully, not in) the park during the time I was there.
One of the canyon waterfalls.
There go two miscreants
I’m enjoying these pictures; the only time I was in Yellowstone was in 1968, with my family, and hardly any pictures survived.
eclare
What an amazing landscape! Thank you for sharing.
JeanneT
Amazing place and pics: thank you!
Ten Bears
And the biggest …
Betty
What a spectacle!
stinger
Wonderful pictures!
Laura Too
Great way to wake up, thanks!
mvr
Thank you PaulB! It looks like you hiked into the Canyon of the Yellowstone, which I have always meant to do and never done.
I like the Mammoth pictures. Those calcified formations are really cool and change quite a bit over time as the water flows change.
I notice we were there at the same time in 2017. The haze from the fires was pretty heavy at that time and gave the light a kind of eerie cast. I’m afraid that is going to be the new normal.
JoyceCB
Great memories, PaulB! I was there as a child nearly sixty years ago. In those days we didn’t look for elk or buffalo, they were almost non-existent inside the park. We stopped for bears. Anytime you saw a car stopped at the side of the road up ahead you kept your eyes peeled for a bear. Grizzlies I think, but my memory may be off. It was a wonderful place.
Mary G
Thanks so much. Such fascinating geology. Now I want to soak in a hot spring.
snoey
@Mary G: Boiling river just below Mammoth where it flows (a few hundred yards) into the Gardner river. Park where the Gardner crosses the highway and walk back upstream. There is a cascade of various temperature pools – natural jacuzzi effect.
Family has a place in Gardiner and my sister used to be a ranger there, so I get to be there regularly.
For me, seeing other people, especially kids, getting what the park is about is one of the best things about it now.
S. Cerevisiae
Yellowstone is such a fascinating place, I was lucky enough to see Steamboat Geyser go off in 2005 although it’s erupting much more frequently the last few years.
J R in WV
Yellowstone is almost like being on a different planet, it’s so strange, so alien. We parked at a small feature, came back to the car and saw steam rising from a drainage gate right under the car. Glad it was a rental.
Amazing place. I knelt on one of the board walks in a major basin and laid my hand on the hard bare earth, it was as hot as a griddle, it was disturbing to feel that close to the molten parts of the earth! Thanks for sharing those great photos.
PaulB
If by “hike into” you mean following the path down to the platform that overlooks the top of the waterfall, then yes. I do recommend it, since that platform is literally right on top of the falls, so you get not only a better view of the canyon but you also get to see the water traveling over the edge and falling into the canyon below, accompanied by a thunderous roar.
My legs protested the climb back out again but it was just a matter of taking it slowly. I think it took about 45 minutes to return to the top of the canyon but my memory is a bit fuzzy now.
On a prior trip, I had taken the “fire escape” style steps on one wall of the canyon almost all the way down to the base of the canyon. I wasn’t brave enough, or in shape enough, to risk them on this trip. Maybe next time, now that I’ve lost weight and have gotten much more fit.
Definitely. It made for some interesting sunrises and sunsets but was also very frustrating at times, particularly when trying to take a picture from any kind of distance. I said in a comment on the prior thread that a side trip to the Grand Tetons was a total bust, as the haze was so thick that I literally could not see the mountains from the various overlooks.
mvr
@PaulB: Thanks for the info about where you’ve been in the Canyon. I think there is a trail down into the Canyon from another location, but I can’t now find it on a map. I’m getting old and likely conflating memories.