Yellowstone National Park - hot springs and cyanobacteria!

Grand Prismatic Spring with Excelsior Geyser bubbling in the background - Midway Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Copyright (c) 2011 Wendee Holtcamp


For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

- William Shakespeare

This week I went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to spend some time with Dr Paul Cox, founder of the Institute for Ethnomedicine (among other things - a very interesting and accomplished scientist he is!). This is Paul in the lab looking at some Phormidium under the microscope - a cyanobacteria or blue-green algae. You can see it on the computer screen. I'm writing an article about his work on BMAA, cyanobacteria and Lou Gherig's disease (ALS - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).
On one of the days, Cox's colleague at the Institute, Dr Sandra Banack, took me to Yellowstone - and this is related to the story! She showed me a little known waterfall, Moose Falls, not far off the road (You can view photos from my last trip there, in 2009 - to the Lamar Valley, Mammoth Hot Springs and more - when we saw wolves and bighorn sheep!)
Ah, so lovely! We went on this steep but short hike to a ledge overlooking Grand Prismatic Spring - the largest hot spring in the U.S.! A stunning view isn't it? Apparently not a lot of people know about this trail. You get a much broader/better view than on the boardwalks. We ate lunch up there. This is a view of the Excelsior Geyser beyond in the distance, which wasn't gushing at the time, only bubbling. It is very steamy, but close up the water is just gorgeous and looks like the Caribbean with coral reefs! It discharges 4000-4500 gallons of water per minute! Oh and the entire Yellowstone National Park practically lies inside a giant caldera, or the rim of a volcano. And with 65,000 years or so since the last eruption, we are due for another. Sandra was kind enough to check the earthquake levels for me... I didn't ask! A side view of the different colors in the pool. And guess what makes the yellow and orange colors? You got it - cyanobacteria - one of the most ancient organisms on earth. The orange is actually made by... Phormidium! The same species Paul was looking at in the lab, which he gathered from a wetland in Logan, Utah. Sandra tells me that underneath the orange mat it is green. They are photosynthetic organisms. Not sure why they get the orange top coat - will have to find out. The yellow is from the cyanobacteria genus Synechococcus and they live in hotter temperatures. A close view of the Phormidium mats in the Grand Prismatic Spring

Sandra on the boardwalk near Grand Prismatic
This is a really close up view of the Phormidium cyanobacteria.
I'm actually not sure where I shot this but it's more mats of cyanobacteria.
On the side of Excelsior Geyser - looks like the Caribbean doesn't it? Or maybe a hot tub in the Caribbean!
Another view of Excelsior
Near Grand Prismatic and Excelsior lies this beauty - turquoise pool - reflecting a drop-dead gorgeous sky!
Me standing in front of Opal Pool. Having come here many, many times, Sandra was surprised at how small it was compared to Turquoise pool and suspected something in the water under the earth must have shifted.
This was taken out the car window! The bison walked right by our car. Of course I had to stick my head/hand out the window to take a photo. It was a little disconcerting to be that close to a bison...
The photo makes it look almost like he is missing a limb but he's actually walking. And yes, it was a boy. I looked.
We took a 1.6 mile (each way) flat hike to Fairy Falls. I didn't see any fairies though. Darn!
The mountainside was steep but Sandra darted right up. She's used to trekking the mountains of Samoa, Fiji and other places looking for bats, and other things. Evidence of the massive 1988 fires is everywhere - notice all the downed trees?
She pointed out the many edible berries on the mountainsides this time of year. These are Saskatoon berries and we had some, as well as wild raspberries and huckleberries.
I liked this view of the whorls in this dead tree, plus the new life coming through.
And of course we had to stop by and see Old Faithful. This was my fourth visit to Yellowstone, but I hadn't seen it erupt since I was a kid of 14. We had stopped here while moving from Portland, Oregon to Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is pre-eruption. Old Faithful will start putting out some steam. A lot of people had gathered around. We actually arrived about 20 minutes before it's eruption, so perfect timing!
And thar she blows!
On the way out of the park we saw a couple of elk in a meadow. We looked but didn't spot any moose or bear or wolves. Bummer!
A closer view of the two elk.

Yellowstone National Park!

Photos from Wendee & Elissa's Most Excellent Adventure! We went to Chico Hot Springs in Pray, Montana and Yellowstone's north side. Highlights include soaking in the hot springs in 20 degree weather... closing the saloon down at 2am, and in the park seeing two wolf packs and hearing them howl!! Plus we saw bison, elk, bighorn sheep, a fox, and blacktail deer. Not bad! No bears or moose though! The only moose I saw was dead on top of someone's car driving through Bozeman. Oh and we saw some "homeo sapens"! :) (Inside joke! Well not anymore! LOL)

Emigrant Peak near Pray, Montana. This is where Elissa and Ben got married!

Another shot of Emigrant Peak. This is just around the corner from Chico Hot Springs Resort where we stayed last night. We soaked in the hot springs, had dinner, and then went out to the "saloon" and listened to the Clumsy Lovers play, and then we stayed until they closed at 2am!

The caboose we stayed in at Chico Hot Springs - it was so cool!!

Inside the caboose. It was a gorgeous room!

Hanging at the saloon at Chico Hot Springs.

We met some great people after dinner at the Chico Hot Springs dining roon.
Elissa and I on our most excellent adventure!
This arch gateway represents the original entrance to America's very first national park (Yellowstone, obviously)! Now most people use the east and west entrance and fewer visitors come to the northside but the Lamar Valley is a fantastic place to view wildlife. :)

Bighorn sheep alongside the road, just before entering Yellowstone National Park from the North entrance.

Icicles.

This is the walkway at Mammoth Hot Springs. There were several hot springs here which you can see by the rising steam!

A view along the Mammoth Hot Springs trail/walkway

A closeup of the terracing at Minerva terraces - "living sculptures" formed by the hydrothermal activity.

A bighorn sheep on the mountainside. Hard to see in the pic this size, click to see it larger!

Elissa and me with a moose hat on! This was the spot where we saw the Druid Wolf pack (near Slough Creek) but they were too far away to get a photo of. While here we met some folks who follow the wolves around and love to observe them using scopes. They're the ones who knew what wolf pack it was. One had a radio collar on. We even heard and saw them howl!! THAT was sooo amazing!!

A baby bison amidst a herd.

Bison saying hi!

An old timey bus at Mammoth Hot Springs. I think they use these for tours.

The Yellowstone River.

Devil's Slide and the Yellowstone River

Elissa spotted a second wolf pack on the roadside in the Lamar Valley near Blacktail Deer Plateau. There are 3 wolves here, two black ones in the foreground and a third grey one coming down the hill that I didn't even see until I upped the contrast in Photoshop!

There are two wolves here, a black one and one barely visible behind it that it's grey -you can barely see its ears and head just to the right of the other one.

Here's another shot of the three wolves walking across the valley. It's not as zoomed in as the other pic above but if you click on it you can see it larger!

A big daddy-o! We heard him make his bugle call. He was in the town of Mammoth Hot Springs just inside the park entrance.

A baby elk in Mammoth Hot Springs (a little community just inside the park). The elk often go there and hang out and eat grass!

new adventures ahead!

Logan Pass in Glacier National Park, Montana
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

A quick update just so everyone knows I haven't fallen off the face of the planet! We had to reschedule the camping and tubing trip from a couple weekends ago to this coming weekend due to rain... the Texas Hill Country desperately needs rains to replenish its aquifers and nourish its wildlife and so forth but we were a bit sad... the weather was so warm back then and now it's started to cool down. Normally you'd think, ok, that is a good thing for camping right? But the thing is... and this is a minor thing, really, but the San Marcos River emerges from a spring and stays right around 72 degrees, which is a bit chilly. It's perfect when it's blazing hot out but when it's 80 or 85 as it will be this coming weekend... well that may be a bit cold on the toesies (and behinds). But we will have fun anyway! Sam is bringing a friend of his and Doug is coming too. We plan to do the same basic thing I mentioned before- camp at McKinney Falls State Park and tube down the San Marcos River. Yea!

Hope I can upload a couple pics afterwards but the reality is I may not be able to for a while, as I leave on TUESDAY for yet another trip! And yes, as you can imagine I am totally inundated, overwhelmed, swamped, and basically going crazy. I have two bags packed for different trips, trying to back up my computer and print things I'll need for the plane trip, taxi the kids here and there (school, soccer practice, cross country practice etc) me to the gym, and write and research as many blog posts as I can SO that I can focus on one thing during the next 3 weeks while I'm away... writing a couple chapters in my book!!! Aye yi yi.

So where am I going you ask? Well, I have researched secluded getaways and friends' cabins for a couple years and after talking about it for oh months, years, I'm doing it! I decided to go stay with my friend Elissa in Bozeman Montana who is graciously opening her home to me to stay there! She has a basement (I think) that is like a self contained apartment so I'll stay there, work work work while she's at work (she and her husband own Sweetpea's Nursery) and we'll get to visit together in the evenings, and take a couple little excursions! Mostly I plan to write day and night! We plan to try to get to either Yellowstone National Park which is only an hour and a half away from her place (in Wyoming) or Glacier National Park which is 5 or 6 hours west, in Montana.

I've been to Yellowstone twice and absolutely love it! I love the geysers and grand prismatic pool and the bison and bears... The last time I went was a decade ago with the kids and Matt on our way back from our insanely long drive to Alaska and back (we got to visit Elissa then too) and the other time when I was 14 years old and moving between Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota. I went to Glacier a couple years ago with my dad, and if you're a faithful Bohemian Adventures reader, you may remember my blog post from then!

I am writing a feature about pikas, and hope to visit with a biologist working on them at Yellowstone but that may not be possible... again you may remember Dad and I went pika-spotting in Glacier a couple years back (pics are at the blog post in previous link) with grad student Lucas Moyer-Horner and I will be writing up that experience in this article. Pikas are so cute! They are also threatened by global warming, and there's a petition into the US Fish & Wildlife Service to list them as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

I'll end this now, and hope to update a wee bit from Montana! Godspeed!