Hot springs

In Yellowstone they scare the daylights out of you with regards to bears. Of course we just happened to pick a campsite in Canyon, right in the middle of bear habitat. You have to completely clean your campsite and pack everything but your sleeping equipment back into your vehicle. We had no problems, fortunately. Long gone are the days they would have amphitheaters where they would feed the bears garbage for the tourists viewing pleasure.

We woke up to a freezing cold morning, had a nice breakfast, and headed for Mammoth Hot Springs, which was an hour long drive inside the park. The place is enormous.

Absaroka Mountains

 

Tower Fall with rainbow

Mammoth Hot Springs is a spectacular mineral formation where over thousands of years the superheated water brings up dissolved minerals and deposits them into terraced formations. There are active sites, where the bacteria cause a range of colors. It's hard to photograph the formations to do justice to the structure and color, and certainly the sulphurous smell.

 

 

 

We went afterwards to Norris basin, which is a large plain covered with minerals, hot springs, and mud pots. They warn you not to step off the boardwalk because you can break through into the ph 1 boiling hot water and die instantly. Of course, much of the boardwalk has no railings.

 

On the way back to the camp, we had an extremely close encounter with a bison. Lynn could have touched him up the window.

 

We had a lovely dinner, met some other campers who were doing a western trip for a month, but starting from California instead.