A
picture of the Natural Bridge, a little bit closer than mine
and
from the other side.These are a few pictures that my baby sister Jennifer has contributed. She took these during the summer of '97.
A
picture of the Natural Bridge, a little bit closer than mine
and
from the other side.
A
golden mantle ground squirrel. It's one of those small cute rodents anyway,
eating and enjoying the day in the geyser basin.
A
marmot. 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. 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 that I don't have many geyser pictures,
so here is one. (see the geyser rant). 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 in this cone, and that they got covered with silica from the
geyser water to form the cone.
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.
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.
I have some old photos taken by Jackson from the Library of Congress, but
I don't remember the link to them. If you happen to have a link to them,
let me know, or add it yourself to the links page.
Morning
Glory Pool, 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 down into the pool, so it doesn't quite look like a pure blue morning
glory anymore. I understand that at one time it had a scalloped edge to
it that has been taken bit by bit. This spring very rarely erupts as a
geyser (so there - see my geyser rant).
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, (see
the geyser rant) but 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.
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