Yellowstone – America’s First National Park

October 9, 2014 by lsbisson 5 Comments

Lucas & Franklin at Grand Prismatic Spring

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming was established in 1872 as America’s first national park. On October 3rd Franklin and I visited this magical place.

A buffalo grazing by the road

We saw a bunch of different geyser basins as well as other geothermal features such as mudpots (an acidic hot spring), fumaroles (an opening in the planet’s crust, often in the neighborhood of volcanoes, which emits steam and gases such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen sulfide), and hot springs (a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth’s crust). Grand Prismatic Spring was the most colorful. It was very windy when we arrived however so we did not see all of the beautiful colors. The steam kept us warm though.

Bull elk (male)

While we were driving around in different parts of the park we saw many animals, including a Grizzly bear, elk, buffalo, fox, and moose.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Later that day we went to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which had a waterfall in it. The canyon had a bunch of colors on the walls like orange, green, black, gray and yellow. The Yellowstone River is what created the canyon and the falls.

Old Faithful at night approximately 8:00 pm

Our last stop was Old Faithful. We watched it spurt water up into the air about 130 feet high. It was really big and cool. It was after dark by the time we finished and because a bridge was out on one road passageway, we had to drive three hours to get back to our campsite. It was almost midnight when we returned. Franklin and I were very tired but had a great day at Yellowstone.