Here are the promised pictures from Yellowstone a little while back. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny. We drove past a lot of people watching wolves with high-powered telescopic devices, we walked amongst some Buffalo, thousands of tarny marmots (which is what Luke kept calling them even though they looked like squirrels to me. They live in the ground like prairie dogs in big communities and our trail seemed to go right through a rather large one.
Also, I am finally totally finished with school. Year one complete. All in all I am rather pleased with what has been presented me out here and what I have made of it. Huzzah! I about a week and a half of almost total freedom until summer session starts.
Every spring and fall some roads in Yellowstone are closed to cars but open to bikers as they get ready for the changing of the seasons. Yesterday I experienced this for the first time with a 42 mile trip from Mammoth Hot Springs to Norris Geyser Basin and back. I bought a new bike last week, a Giant OCR 1. It is a road bike. I’m excited about it. Yellowstone without any cars is rather grand. The weather was fairly warm (despite there being an abundance of snow that hadn’t melted yet). The 42 miles went by quite quickly. Riding a bike made for the roads is a lot faster than riding a mountain bike with some slick tires on it.
The 3rd picture is the Boiling River. It is a lot of water that emerges from underground after being heated inside the earth. It is quite warm and swimming directly in it is illegal. However, right after the spot where the picture was taken it meets with the very cold Gardiner River, and that is where you can swim.
The really hot water meeting the cold water makes for a very good temperature. Its like a giant outdoor hottub that is continually flowing past you. I’d driven past it many times, but never actaully checked it out. It is quite awesome, I’ve never seen anything like it. You just hang out in this warm water and watch the elk around you, (we actually saw a bald eagle as well). Pretty classic stuff, I was feeling very spoiled by my surroundings yesterday.
The last one is Luke pondering. When I learn how to put text inbetween these pictures I will, but its not really that easy to do if you don’t know how.
We did some snowshoeing around Yellowstone yestery. It was quite interesting. A beautiful sunny day that wasn’t too cold if you kept moving, ( I think the temperature was probably right around 0 or maybe a little in the negatives).
Also, In the top left if you look under “pages” you’ll see I put some information about the class I’m going to be teaching starting this friday.
