Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

In Yellowstone Park, there’s a different Golden Gate Bridge from that famous bridge in San Francisco. This bridge spans Golden Gate Canyon along Highway 89 actually began as a wooden plank viaduct, which was truly an engineering marvel when it was originally constructed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers in 1885, The bridge was reconstructed four times, the last build completed in 1977.

The bridges were designed to span the canyon as the highway traversed the park. After earthquake damage, the third iteration of the bridge was replaced by a concrete deck on girders supported by concrete piers.

A great blog post featuring the history of the viaduct can be found here. Probably the most interesting note in this story is the construction and premature demise of a tunnel that never got to see public use.

A placard near the pull-off where the opening photo was taken features a short history of the bridge and its predecessors. Click on either of the images above to view them close-up in a gallery on my Flickr site.

John Steiner

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

Last week we explored the natural beauty of Yellowstone National Park. This week, we feature images and details about the vast fields of geothermal energy stored in the earth underneath this unique place. The opening photo features Mammoth Hot Springs in a view from the boardwalk near the uppermost levels of the five terraces. There are about fifty hot springs that created the large limestone structures. Two terrace boardwalks have been created that allow visitors to view the springs from several levels.

There are many types of geothermal activities in the park but the hot springs are a big tourist draw. There is a nearby village with a hotel that attracts many visitors each year. The north park entrance is quite close to the hot springs, so it is a short drive via highway 89 coming south from Gardiner, Montana.

There is a placard that identifies the various terraces and other landmarks in the hot springs area. The photo above is linked to a 4K closeup. If you click on the image, you will navigate to the Flickr album where you can zoom in and drag the map around for a closer view of the terrace map. The placard is located at the point where “You Are Here” is noted in red text on the map.

As a side note, that herd of elk featured in last week’s post was captured on the hillside opposite the hot springs pictured in the lower left corner of this map.

You will find as you climb the boardwalk that each of the areas has a slightly different look based upon the flow and erosion of limestone at that particular point. One of the rangers at one point described the site as having the appearance of an inside-out cave. I have included several other images of Mammoth Hot Springs in my Flickr gallery, so let’s take a look at some of the other geothermal attractions.

After staying in Cody for the night, we headed westbound to the east entrance into the park. Once inside, we found ourselves on the northeast corner of Yellowstone Lake where there are several active steam vents. This area, known as Steamboat Point, has a few parking spots and a placard describing the geothermal activity.

Roadside Spring West is a small thermal pool visible just in front of Nymph Lake as seen from the Nymph Lake viewpoint. Nymph Lake and Roadside Spring West are located in the Norris Basin area. If you check out the image of Nymph Lake in last week’s post, you’ll see this spring in the foreground of the image.

I close this post with a repeat from last week’s post of probably the most famous geothermal event, the eruption of Old Faithful. An average of 11 times a day, Old Faithful spews a stream of steam and water at200+ degrees in a show that attracts millions of viewers annually.

Click on any of the images above to view the entire gallery of photographs captured at Yellowstone (including a few not published here.) Once in the gallery, you can click on each image for a closer view and scroll underneath the image to see the photograph’s metadata. There you will find links to other related galleries as well.

John Steiner

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant had the honor of signing the congressional bill that created Yellowstone as a National Park and the world’s first national park. On the National Park Service pages noting the history of Yellowstone, a small print section set aside notes that some believe that Hot Springs in Arkansas holds the distinction of being the first park. The paragraph sets that notion straight.

“Some sources list Hot Springs in Arkansas as the first national park. Set aside in 1832, forty years before Yellowstone was established in 1872, it was actually the nation’s oldest national reservation, set aside to preserve and distribute a utilitarian resource (hot water), much like our present national forests. In 1921, an act of Congress established Hot Springs as a national park.”

Yosemite became a park also before Yellowstone, but it originated as a state park, not adopted into the National Park System until 1890. One can argue details like this, but no one can argue with the truly beautiful and unique landscape that is Yellowstone. My first views of Yellowstone were approaching from the south entrance. We entered the park late in the afternoon, and as we passed by the southern end of Yellowstone Lake, the sun retreating behind the trees provided a fitting subject for my first image of Yellowstone Park.

We would drive through the park that late afternoon and evening without stopping, exit by the East Entrance Road, and spend another hour driving to our hotel in Cody, Wyoming. We returned to Yellowstone the next morning to spend the day exploring the wonders of this geothermal phenomenon. The photo above features a view of Yellowstone Lake from a pull-off on the main road through the park. The geothermal activities within the park provided much of the impetus to make Yellowstone a national park, so next week I will devote an entire album of photos featuring geothermal activities within the park boundaries. This week’s album features scenic views of the park.

There are plenty of hiking and biking trails, campgrounds for tents and RVs, and back-country camping for people who want to “get away from it all.” But be reminded that Yellowstone is one of the most popular camping destinations in the National Park System and is open to millions of visitors each year. Plan your trip well in advance if you plan to stay in the park whether it be in one of the lodges or camping areas. You can expect popular venues to be reserved a year in advance during the high visitor season.

For day visitors, such as ourselves, we encountered little delay with traffic in early October but found many of the facilities were closed for the season after Labor Day weekend. Though there are places to purchase gasoline in the park, they were closed. As the country was still in some of the throes of the Coronavirus Pandemic, I don’t know if these closures were seasonal or pandemic-related.

Nymph Lake is a small lake surrounded by geothermal features such as small geysers and springs. This image was captured from a main highway pull-off in the section known as the Norris Basin.

You’ll probably notice in some of the images in the gallery that those western wild fires continued to create a hazy sky. The haze removal feature in Luminar AI has been helpful in my photographs all during this trip in September and October 2020, but as they say, it is what it is.

The park is home to many species of wildlife, much of it hidden for most of our visit, however, in the afternoon, near one of the more popular geothermal areas, we saw our first small herd of elk. They appeared over the top of a hill as we were getting ready to move on.

Just before we drove out of the area, I joined a group of photographers lined up along the road to capture their own images. Elk herds in the park can number in the hundreds, and there were quite a few more visible than this smaller group. I suspect there were many more elk behind the hill that we could not see.

Let me see… if a group of elk is called a herd and a group of geese is called a flock, what is a group of photographers called? A viewfinder of photographers? A burst mode of photographers? I leave it to you, dear reader, to come up with better terms than I. Feel free to leave a comment with your ideas.

In the park, we also saw many bison. We also looked high on the cliffs to see if we could find any mountain goats. Finally, late in the afternoon, we noticed a pullout where a large number of cars were parked. People were outside their cars looking high up into the towering cliffs. We found a place to park and discovered the mountain goats that everyone was watching.

Our last stop of the day brought us to a mound surrounded by hundreds of people, all sitting patiently and awaiting probably the most well-known event in the park. As I noted earlier, next week I reserved space for the geothermal features found in Yellowstone Park. But this one feature is so well known that it belongs in any discussion of the world’s first national park. Most of the people in this large group were wearing masks or were sitting socially distanced respecting the guidelines provided by the National Park Service following CDC recommendations.

Everyone was waiting patiently for Old Faithful to explode out of the top of the mound. Our timing had been excellent. We parked the car, the lot quite full, and had a bit of a walk to the viewing area. We waited only about five minutes to see a little bit more steam start rising from the opening at the peak of the geyser. It would only be a minute or two more before the giant release of steam would begin.

Some facts about this popular natural eruption:
Eruptions happen between one and two hours apart. The duration of an eruption allows scientists to determine how long before the next eruption occurs.
Eruptions last from 1 to 5 minutes. On our visit, the eruption lasted about 5 minutes, the duration based upon time stamps on the series of photographs I took from beginning to end of the eruption.
Typical eruptions average around 140 feet (43 m) in height.

For a closer view of the gallery of images including a few extra images not published here, click on any of the above images to link to my Flickr album or click here to go directly to the album.

Stay tuned next week for more on the geothermal attractions at Yellowstone Park.

John Steiner

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

Our first trip to Yellowstone last October left us wanting to return soon. It turned out to be as beautiful as I expected, and we spent an extra day in the area to travel between Yellowstone and the nearby Grand Teton National Park. Known for its geothermal energy, Yellowstone also straddles small parts of Idaho and Montana.

Most people familiar with the park probably think first of the biggest attraction, Old Faithful Geyser. There are plenty of places where natural geothermal activity is released from vents that broke the surface. The main park road follows the shoreline of Yellowstone Lake for several miles. Along the way, there are several places to park and get out to enjoy the view.

About the photo: This image, captured at Steamboat Point, is a view of the lake to the south and west. It is only a short distance from your first views of the lake if you arrive in the park at the East Entrance. The steam vents in the foreground were the first ones we saw on our trip into the park from Cody. Taken with my Samsung S20U, I imported the image into Lightroom, and then final processing done in Luminar 4.

John Steiner