Yellowstone National Park Day 2

All day rain was predicted for the area but I went into the Park anyway.  The problem with short visits is that you are at the mercy of the weather.  As it turned out, there was always the threat of rain, by not much real stuff.

The area of the Park that I drove around is at quite a high altitude; roughly 6000 to 10,000 feet, so the temperature was anything between 3 C and 8 C.  I'm not really well prepared for near freezing in gale force winds, but that's another story.

The park is very well interpreted; most features you can drive up to and there will be a pull-off, a side road, or a full-fledged parking lot with facilities and the ever-present tourist store [but only at the bigger sites].  There are boardwalks through the geyser fields and you can get close to things.  Very well done!

I can't seem to fix the order of these images so I'll describe them in the order in which they show up.  The first is quite dramatic IMHO and shows the various colours that geysers create as they ooze water from below.  A chemist or geologist could probable tell you how each colour was created, just accept that its a very natural process that occurs over time.  I thought it created a spectacular show.  This is a fairly new water spring and you can just make out the clear water on the top of that white diagonal running down the left border.  The point of source of the water changes with time and makes these delightful patterns on the new mounds being created.

This next shot is of a plateau created by a spring-fed pool.  The white stuff is not snow, it's probably calcium [but don't quote me until I read all the literature...]  This tree was happily growing there before the pool got created and now it's been killed by all the natural toxic stuff being coughed up by the earth.  You can just see the cloud of steam at the edge of the plateau on the left.  I does make for rather striking contrasts, doesn't it?  The mountains in the background is what the area is all about and the threatening clouds have been following me all day...

This last image is of some rather big boulders encountered today.  They are probably molten lava or something similar; the earth's crust is not very deep around here...  

I'm sure some clever grandkids could find strange faces and weird body parts somewhere in all this.  Fascinating isn't it?