Growing Rich Everyday... My Weblog

Day 4
By now we had realized that the park was extremely huge than we had expected. There was yet a lot to be seen and secondly today's day was predicted to be full of thunderstorms and snow later in the afternoon.

So we decided that we would make maximum use of the day by starting our "coverage" as early as 6:30-7:00 am, either seeing an attraction or two or driving directly to the next point of interest, and then having our breakfast at about 8:30/9:00 am.
We started off from Tower Falls at about 6:45 pm to go to Mammoth Hot Springs. On the way we saw a moose , coyote and a bunch of antelopes. The drive through the misty road was awesome. We were keen on taking a ranger program at Mammoth Hot Springs. The program was scheduled to start at 9:30 am and that was the last program of the season before most areas of the park started to close for the season. We had our breakfast and then drove up the Upper Terraces of Mammoth Springs. We drove back just in time to catch the 2-hour ranger program at the Lower Terraces.

The ranger was very good and she explained how the limestone/aka travertine terraces were formed at this part of the park.This area of the park has a lot of limestone in the soil as against the rest of the areas which have a lot of rhyolite in the soil. As a result, the hot water springs deposit the limestone sediments as they gush through. The rich orange-ish hues are of course due to the bacteria that thrive in there. We liked the Minerva, Cleopatra and best of all the Canary Terraces. The lifeless trees near the Canary terraces looked spooky, as if directly from some Halloween-special movies.

After Mammoth Hot Springs, we drove further south to the Norris Geyser Basin. This is supposedly the largest geyser basin in the park. It consists of 2 basin loops - the larger Back Basin loop and the smaller Porcelain Basin loop. It also has a nice small and sweet museum explaining the geology of the different hydrothermal features. We liked the Steamboat geyser and the green algae flows the best here. The clouds were looming in and it was already beginning to get chilly while we were at the basin. So we kind of hurried to see all the attractions here. By the time we were done, it was almost 2:30 pm.

We still had a few hours left before we could crash. So we decided to go further south to finish where we left off at the Old Faithful basin area. So we covered the Biscuit Basin and then went to see the Morning Glory pool at the Old Faithful area. It was raining hard and was too chilly at the Old Faithful area, but we nevertheless decided to dodge the rain and still go to the very far Morning Glory pool at the end of the trail. On our way back, we were greeted with hailstorms. Our feet were wet and cold. It was only 5:30 pm but then we decided to call it a day after having a warm early dinner at the Yellowstone inn.