Yellowstone day 4, Hot Stuff

One of the most famous features in Yellowstone is all the hot because of the crust being so near cooling magma in Yellowstone.  If you want details, look up Yellowstone and read about it.  I'm sure that the why isn't near as interesting as the what.  The features were almost all caused by the amount of heat and water in them.  The green in the first picture is not plant in nature.  I promise you that the runoff from the pool was way too hot to sustain any plant growth.As you tour the hot spots, you will find that you are required to walk on a board walk.  The hot mud is in a lot of places just a crust and below the surface can be scalding or caustic water that will just eat your skin off.  The smell of sulfur fills the air in most places.  The steam can eat the glass on your lens if you are not careful.


Steaming Lake

Our Guide told us that a lot of the water in the features can be up to 100 years old from springs in the ground.  Based on the lack of rain in the park, it has to come from somewhere other than as rain. This pool is fairly typical of the pools.  It is very deep and has hot gasses just coming up as bubbles.


Boiling pool


The same feature without water looks the same but just has venting gasses. 


Same kind of feature without the water.


This feature is called dragon's mouth.  It has gas and water gurgling out of it and the sound is a low growl.  One of the kids in a tour group just ahead of us said they need to carve the snout of a dragon on it.  I am sure that the park service would scream that it would not preserve the park as it is, but Disney would love it.

Dragon's Mouth

I can't even begin to cover all the different types of steaming features but I can tell you that they were one of the best features of the entire park.  Tomorrow I will show a bunch of the animals and a boat ride.  I will try to wrap up our tour with the fauna. 

MUD