Yellowstone National Park

Emerald Pool

Sunset at Great Fountain Geyser

Great Fountain Geyser panorama

Upper Falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Yellowstone has it's own "Grand Canyon" with 2 major falls. The walls of the canyon are extremely steep and very colorful. The block of snow on the left is extremely large. It is probably the size of 2 or 3 major department stores. I have seen remnants of it in September! It actually has it's own waterfall from the melting snow and ice.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

This is the lower falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The picture was taken from the bottom of Uncle Tom's Trail. The trail goes down the canyon for a spectacular view of the falls.

Here is a section of the trail leading down Uncle Tom Trail

Grand Prismatic Spring in Midway Geyser Basin

Minerva Terrace Colors in 1972. If you're been to Yellowstone National Park in the last 5 or 10 years, you probably wondered why they have the boardwalk around Minerva Terrace. The terrace is mostly white and lifeless. Here's a photo from 1972 that shows what it looked like in its prime. Water flowed down from the top and cascaded from one terrace to the next. One of the earthquakes in the area caused Minerva Terrace to dry up

Minerva Terrace Close-up in 1972

Minerva Terrace in 2004

Orange Spring Mound

Morning fog along the Madison River

Morning Glory Pool. This was taken a few days after a 10 inch snow fall. The pool had the best color I have every seen. The colors come from algae and lichen. Different areas of pools and geysers maintain near constant temperatures. Different color algae and lichen grow at these different temperatures.

Elk in the morning mist. We managed to get up at 4 or 5 most mornings so we could enjoy the early morning sunrises. The three hour time difference did help. I wanted to get to the geyser basin for sunrise, but we were always intrigued by the sites and wildlife along the western entrance.

Old Faithful in a heavy wind

Palette Springs in Mammoth Hot Springs.

Here, you can see the damage from the fire about 15 years ago and the regrowth of the forest. Note the Elk on the right-hand side. The fire occurred about 1988. It consumed 60% of the park. The problem was that for over 50 years the National Park Service (NPS) policy was to put out fires as soon as they started. This let the dead brush and trees collect on the forest floor. Then the NPS changed their policy and decided that fires were good. That year was an extremely dry year. When the fire started it was extremely intense. The NPS stuck to their policy and did nothing. Once 30% of Yellowstone had burned, people were getting concerned. After another 10% burned, the NPS was concerned and started fighting it. The trouble now was that 40% of the park was burning and it was extremely hard to fight. The NPS did change their policy and now do some controlled burns. Basically, they are trying to get the parks back to a more natural state. The fires are an important part of nature and need to happen.

Rustic Falls

After a snow storm

Another storm is coming. 10 inches of snow on the ground from last night and here comes some more! Guess what, this was taken on May 29th! Four days later it was in the 70s.

White Dome Geyser

Yellowstone Golden Gate Bridge

Geyser detail

Good fishing

Grand Prismatic Spring

Another shot of Grand Prismatic Spring

Devil's Slide. Early prospectors thought than the red was due to cinnabar, or mercuric sulfide, but it is actually sandstone and shale stained with iron oxide. The walls of the slide are made of quartz sandstone. Devils Slide is located very close to Yellowstone National Park and a little north of Gardiner. Devils Slide is on Cinnabar Mountain.

Kayaking on the Grayling River. As we were leaving Yellowstone National Park, I stopped to take some pictures of the river. Around the bend came 2 kayakers. Once they got close, they started hot-dogging for me. Here, one of them did a roll.

Elk

We were driving out the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park and spotted some elk down a hill. We stopped and found that one of the elk had just given birth. In a little while, we were treated to this site. After watching for about an hour, we continued on our way. About an hour or two later, we stopped again and they were gone.

Elk

Bison and calf

Late May snow storm. On our first day in Yellowstone, it snowed 10 inches! Luckily, we had rented a four wheel drive SUV. The wildlife were busy contending with the storm and basically ignored us. It was the best wildlife viewing day we have ever had in Yellowstone.

Coyote checking out the traffic

Pronghorn

Mule deer on early morning river crossing

Marmot showing natural camouflage

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All photographs on this page are Copyright 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007 by Roger Tuttleman
Roger & Marian's Web Site, last modified 06/16/09