Wyoming

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	Snake River rafting	Told as we entered that a bear was in the campground - No bear, but a deer next to the RV
Willow Flats		Grand Teton in the clouds
Jenny Lake with Grand Teton in upper left
Sunny pictures from Gene
More bathroom stops	Round rocks left by glaciers.	New Grand Teton Discovery and Visitor Center- Opened Aug. 11
Bull and cow moose feeding	Moose print	TheTetons (Note)
Grand Teton and Teton Glacier	Snake River (Note)
Early morning clouds	Beaver Dam	Canadian Geese
	Abandoned beaver lodge	Bear scrape (Note)
Rock imbedded in root of tree		Elk antler arch (Note)
(Note)	Old Faithful (Note)
Finale	Bison	Cow Elk
Decorated bison in West Yellowstone
Steamboat Geyser (Note)	Cystern Spring	Dead Trees (Note)
New and burned trees (Note)	Virginia Cascades	Up close and personal - walking down the road
Coyote looking for lunch	Can't tell if he is chewing?	Upper Falls
Lower Falls (Note)	Yearling Elk	Bull Elk
View on hike up Mt. Washburn	Hawk	Grand Canyon of Yellowstone
Yellowstone River headed to Falls	Upper Falls	Firehole River Falls
Old Faithful from Observation Point	See people waiting on eruption	Solitary Geyser
North Goggle Geyser	Beehive Geyser	Run-off from Old Faithful
Fire protection system on roof		Sapphire Pool
Shell Geyser dry	Shell Geyser - 2 hours later	Bisquit Basin from 500 ft. up
Serotinous pinecone	Steep going down	Mystic Falls
Bison in front of us leading parade	We went by him - very carefully	Bison Jam

Grand Teton National Park

The Snake River flows through the park and has been part of the shaping mechanism for ages. This pictures show two different banks of the river, the highest shows how large the river was many, many years ago. The Snake River is damed up in a couple of places to catch winter snow and rains. During the Spring and Summer the water is released to provide irrigation water to Idaho to grow those great Idaho potatoes; the water level changes about 30 ft between winter and summer. The Snake River empties into the Columbia River and then finally flows into the Pacific Ocean. (Return)

This example of a 'bear scrape' is one source of food for the bear. They strip off the bark and then eat the more tender part of the tree right below the outer bark. They also come back to scrapes and eat the ants that get stuck in the sap that oozes out of the damaged tree. This picture is not sharp enough to show it but there are bear hairs stuck in the sap; this bear was a color they call cimmamon, sort of like blond. (Return)

The large arch is made from old elk antlers. The elk grow a new set of antlers each year, just like the deer and moose. When Spring comes, the elk drop their antlers and they just become part of the landscape. Some of the antlers actually become food for small rodents that gnaw on them to get minerals they need for their diet. Everything in the wild becomes food for some other animal. The elk in the park all migrate south about 45 miles to an 'elk refuge'. It is a several thousand acre parcel of land that was created to protect the elk during the winter where the elk are fed and studied. Since they are in a protected area, when they drop their antlers the antlers are easily found. In April, the local Boy Scout troops are allowed to enter the refuge and recover the antlers. On the first weekend of May, there is a huge auction in downtown Jackson where people bid on the antlers. They are bought for all kinds of reasons, to make furniture, to make chandeliers, to make knife handles or to just be carved into various art work. This auction raised $60,000 dollars in 2007 and the money is split between the refuge and the Scouts. (Return)

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone is our first national park and was actually the first national park in the world. It was a summer home for some native american indians, but the super cold winters kept it from being a year round home; it sometimes gets to 50 below zero. The indians called the river that runs through the park " Mi tsi a da zi" which means "Rock Yellow River"; this comes from the yellow color of the canyon walls in which the river flows in the northern part of the park. The middle of the park is actually a 'caldera' that was formed by a large volcano that erupted here about 640,000 years ago, as the volcano was erupting, the middle of the volcano colapsed and created the massive valley that contains most of the park. The northern area of the park was over a very hot spot and over thousands of years, the heat actually turned the rock left by the volcano into a chalky, softer rock, that was colored yellow. The softer rock allowed the river to dig this deep canyon that is now called "The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". The park has many areas of active geysers, hot springs and mud pots. These are all created by extreme heating from beneath the surface. In this area, the liquid magma beneath the surface is only 5-8 miles down where in most parts of the world, the magma is 30 miles down. The close magma and a maze of cracks in the rock have created this unusual area where boiling water comes to the surface. If the structure is just right, a geyser is formed instead of just a spring of hot water.
The first white man to see the park was a man that was part of the Lewis and Clark expeditions in the early 1800's. He brought back "wild tales" of "waterfalls that went up", we did not have the name geyser yet. He described boiling water and pools of boiling mud; to some people he said, "I think I found Hell". His descriptions were not accepted by the people back east; he was known to drink a lot. As fur trappers came into the area in search of beavers, they began to bring back similar tales of this unusual place of boiling water. The government finally decided to send some respected scientist to the area to really find out what was here. They sent three groups out to Yellowstone in 1869, 1870 and 1871. The final group in 1871 included a photographer and an artist to help document what was here. All three groups presented their findings to the U.S. Congress with pleas that this place needs to be preserved. In 1872 Yellowstone was created as the first national park and the law passed by Congress was signed into law by President U.S. Grant, not Theadore Roosevelt as many think. Roosevelt was an avid conservationist and created five national parks and help create the Antquities Act of 1906 that has been used by many presidents to preserve and protect areas as monuments and many have later become national parks. (Return)

"Old Faithful" has become the most famous of the park's geysers and it draws many visitors to the park. The geyser erupts about every 90 minutes, but the size of the eruption varies in height. The most amazing thing to learn after watching this thing erupt is that the opening in the rock where the water passes is only 4 inches in diameter. An eruption can release as much as 8,000 gallons of water in a few minutes. (Return)

Steamboat Geyser is the highest geyser in the world. When it has a major eruption is has shot water and steam up as high as 300-400 ft. The last major eruption was in 2000. Today is has many smaller eruptions that might go 10-20 ft. high, but no one can predict when it will have a major eruption. Cystern Spring, the next picture, is connected to Steamboat Geyser and as Steamboat erupts, the water out of Cystern Spring drains away and then later refills.(Return)

The trees right next to Cystern Springs are all dead from the heat and mineral laden water that flows out of the spring. These trees are all white on the bottom of their trunks and are actually being petrified from the dissolved silica that is in the water. The silica is sucked up into the wood and is gradually turning them into stone. (Return)

In the summer of 1988, a series of fires burned about 38 percent of the trees in the forest. This had been a very hot, dry summer and some of the fires were not extinguised until the snow began to fall in October. Most of the trees in this area are 'lodgepole pines', a very tall, straight tree. A unique feature of the lodgepole pine is that its cone, called a 'serotinous' cone is a very tightly packed cone that is covered with a wax. The pine cone does not release the seeds until it reaches a temperature of about 115 degrees, the result of a fire. So, the lodgepole pine actually needs fire to reseed itself and produce another new forest. This picture shows the tall, dead trees burned by the 1988 fire and the newer trees that are now about 20 years old. The hillsides are an amazing blanket of green trees among the old dead ones. Most of the trees that were burned were over 100 years old, but they need to fire to continue the forest. (Return)

The waterfalls shown in the last two pictures are the Upper Falls and Lower Falls. These water falls are on the Yellowstone River at the beginning of what is called "The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". The Lower Falls is actually 308 ft. high, higher than Niagra Falls. On a normal summer, there is 60,000 gallons of water going over the falls every second, yes that is every second. (Return)

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