To the Moon and back

Tuesday was largely devoted to driving north out of Utah. However, we did make a slight detour to the west in Idaho, to visit the Craters of the Moon National Monument.

This area encompasses a series of volcanic cinder cones that stretch out along a fissure, as well as extensive lava flows. The last eruption in this area is estimated to have been about 2,000 years ago, so the lack of vegetation suggests that this area has been largely arid over that period. Our visit was short, and we didn't do much walking on the trails because it was raining, and there was lightning flashing in the distance, but it was still a remarkable place to visit. In the seven mile drive through the park, we saw more volcanic features than we had during our visit to Hawaii. For people who are interested in volcanoes and lava flows, this would be a fascinating place to visit and explore.

After leaving the park, we turned around and headed east towards Jackson, Wyoming, where we were to spend the night. Most of this trip was pretty flat, and we drove through a second heavy rainstorm, but the last hour was a climb up and over Teton Pass into Jackson Hole. As we climbed the steep switchback road to the pass, we passed a number of bicyclist cruising down from the pass. We also saw a couple of them climbing the steep 10% grade up to the pass on the other side! Talk about a workout! We were delayed briefly outside of Jackson while crews removed the wreckage from an auto accident, but otherwise had an uneventful drive.

Yellowstone

Wednesday morning started early, as we still had to drive from Jackson through the Grand Teton National Park to reach the day's objective, Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is a huge park, and while we knew we couldn't see everything, we were hoping to see most of the highlights in a single day, if we could.

After a brief stop at the first visitor's center at the south entrance, we made our way to the Old Faithful geyser basin. We were lucky enough to arrive just before the next predicted eruption of this most famous geyser. Old Faithful lived up to its name, eruption almost exactly on schedule. We then went for a walk around the nearby geyser hill trail to look at some of the other thermal features in the area. As we were exploring, a park ranger told us that the Beehive Geyser was showing signs of erupting. This geyser is fairly irregular, but impressive when it does, shooting water 130 to 180 feet in the air!

We found a spot on the boardwalk near the geyser to watch, and after only about five minutes or so, the show began. The Beehive Geyser lived up to its billing as an impressive geyser, but about a minute after it started erupting, we noticed that Old Faithful was erupting behind it! We had positioned ourselves well to see the rare sight of two big geysers spouting at the same time. Afterward, the ranger told us that he's worked at Yellowstone for 14 years and only seen these two geysers erupt together 4 or 5 times. It was an amazing sight.

After some more exploring in the geyser basins, we then headed north to explore the Mammoth Hot Springs area of the park. Here, the hot springs have built up massive formations of mineral deposits, with terraces and other features. The formations were every bit as impressive as I remembered from my visit here with my family as a teenager, but the springs were MUCH less active. There was very little water flow, and consequently, much less thermophile (heat-loving microorganisms) activity to provide the amazing coloration that I remembered.

It was a long day in Yellowstone, but we did manage to see most of what we set out to see. We didn't spot any moose or bears, but did manage to see both elk and bison. We exited the park to the north, and headed to the interstate highway to begin our trip back east. We have a couple of more stops planned, but from here all the travel will be eastward.