Driving through America�s National Parks
Yellowstone - Part 1
by Quamrul Haider
The smaller size of the Grand Teton National Park and its close proximity to Yellowstone allowed us to split August 15 between the two parks. Accordingly, after the Tetons, we spent the second half of the day at the Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone is a land of superlatives. It is the oldest, largest and most visited national park in America. A showcase of geological wonders, it is home to one-half of the worlds known geothermal features, including the famous Old Faithful geyser. The park has the largest population of wild bison in the world. Grizzlies, black bears, elks, moose, coyotes, wolves, lynxes and mountain lions are other denizens of the park.
Resting atop a giant slumbering volcano, Yellowstones landscape was formed half a million years ago from three catastrophic volcanic eruptions and subsequent collapse of the last one into itself forming a huge crater called caldera. The geothermal features of the park, therefore, serve as reminders that another volcanic eruption is imminent. However, according to geologists, since catastrophic eruptions occur so infrequently, it is statistically unlikely to occur at Yellowstone anytime soon.
The wildfires during the summer of 1988 impacted 35 percent of the parkland. The worst affected area was the western section of the park. Yet not one major geothermal feature was destroyed. We noticed that vegetation in many places is regenerating and coming back to life.
With so many interesting attractions, it is impossible to see Yellowstone in a week, let alone a day. But because of our tight schedule, we set aside only day and a half for the park. In this short time, we thought our best approach would be to concentrate on a few, perhaps four or five major sections of the park. Hence, we pushed ourselves to the limit to see as much of the attractions as we could in those sections.
We started with a stop at the visitor center, where a park ranger told us we wont be able to make it to the Old Faithful, located in the Upper Geyser Basin, on time to watch its imminent eruption. The geyser is old in terms of age and is faithful because of its consistent eruptions that happen daily with nearly 90 percent accuracy. It erupts every 75 to 105 minutes depending on the duration of the previous eruption.
While waiting for the Old Faithful to erupt 90 minutes or so later, we decided to see other attractions in the Upper Geyser Basin. Amongst the many geothermal features here, the most impressive was the Morning Glory Pool _ a deep, funnel-shaped pool with a dark blue center, resembling remarkably the corolla and color of its namesake flower. Around its rim, invasive yellow bacteria were prominently visible. Unfortunately, the pool lost most of its glory due to vandalism; it is now referred to as The Fading Glory.
Our next stop was the Black Sand Basin _ home of several jewel-like geysers and colorful hot springs. We walked around the quarter mile board walk to see the Emerald Pool, so named because of its emerald green colored water fringed by yellow and orange colored outer ring. Three other colorful pools we saw were the Opalescent Pool which is not a hot spring because of its cooler temperature, Sunset Lake _ a blue thermal pool with a soft sinter bottom with edges containing yellow and orange bacteria and algae, and the Rainbow Pool whose edges display the color of the rainbow. We also watched the frequent eruptions of the Cliff Geyser, named for its cliff-like wall around the crater.
We arrived at the Old Faithful 15 minutes before its scheduled eruption. True to its name, the Old guy erupted on the dot. The jetting of the geyser grew, waned, grew, waned again and in three of these steps, soared to a maximum height of about 150 feet which was maintained for nearly 30 seconds. The dazzling display started to abate and the spouting died three minutes after the eruption.
With the Sun looming over the western horizon, we bid adios to Yellowstone for the day and headed towards our motel in West Yellowstone, a lively tourist-friendly town in the Rocky Mountain enclave in southwestern Montana.
The writer is Professor of Physics at Fordham University, New York.
Photos: Mahjabeen Haider
