We woke up to a rather crisp morning surrounded by peace. Had a quick breakfast in the mess hall and then hopped on the bus to head to the Geyser Basin in Yellowstone. We first stopped at West Thumb lake which is right on top of an active volcano site. There were numerous hot spots. Impressively, one was 53 feet deep. If you fall in, you will fall to your death. Another hot spot our guide discussed was one in which microorganisms eat the gas making sulfuric acid. Many of the organisms found in these hot spots may have been the first microorganisms to practice photosynthesis.
At one point it was mentioned after spotting a bull elk that we used to have 30 million to 60 million bison roaming around. Around the 1900s there were only about 1,000 left. People were still poaching them and the U.S military was left to protect them. This protection was not enough.
We stopped again at a place known as the mud hole. The air smells a lot like rotten eggs or sulfer. The mud holes we saw were gurgling and hissing. We also spotted a small cave that was steaming and hissing known as dragon's mouth. These mud pools are quite hot. Generally around 120 degrees you may see green vegetation, at 140 degrees you may see orange vegetation and at 160 you see pink vegetation. Due to the high elevation, the water boils at 199 degrees. In general, you won't see much vegetation growing above 160 degrees.
Many bisons were spotted along the trails in small herds. We then traveled to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The pathways were quite beautiful-as were the colors. The colors reminded me of an autumn pallet full of yellows, pinks and oranges within the rocks. We managed to take a few pictures by the artist view where there was a majestic view of a waterfall framed by a few trees. Later in the afternoon we traveled to a lower pull of geysers. The diversity of the geyers surprisrd me for sure. Some of the geyers were bubbling, some hissing, some filled with water and some simply missing.
To end our brilliant afternoon we traveled to see Old Faithful. The water is 144 degrees within Old Faithful. In addition, the land holds roughly 20 percent of all geysers. The neatest thing about Old Faithful is that scientists know enough about it to predict when it is going to erupt. Though this is true of some of the other small geysers, most of the other geysers are quite unknown as to when they are going to erupt. However, it is thought that the piping is rather interconnected among the geysers. You will see that when one goes off often times another one close by spouts off as well. Old Faithful was predicted to erupt around 5:40 plus or minus 10 minutes. While we were waiting for Old Faithful, the Castle Geyser went off as well. This geyser is not as predictable as Faithful. It erupts once every 24 hours about. We lucked out in that we were able to see both!
While waiting for Old Faithful to erupt, we had time to venture into the visitor's center. This contained two levels of valuable information regarding the geysers and various hot spots around Yellowstone. In order for a geyser to occur there must be high temperature, an abundant watersource and usually a fault line as well as consistent earthquakes. The microbes found in these thermal features are known as thermus aquaticus. Many of these microbes are early signs of what life was like millions of years ago. Interestingly, scientists have only identified around 1 percent of the total number of microbes present in the thermal features. Much research still needs to be done regarding the identification of such microbes.