Yellowstone...

... world's first national park and one of its kind. Rivers, lakes, water falls, canyons, geysers, hot springs, wild life and fickle weather, its all here. We met people on the way that differed from what me and Tarun think of Yellowstone but in my opinion Yellowstone is a truly amazing place. Here's why ...

About 2 million acres of forest land where you can find lush green thick forest, vast open land and almost burnt trees (probably from a jungle fire that struck Yellowstone few years ago). So many lakes, creeks and rivers meandering across the park that you forget the count of. Bisons, the huge wild buffalos, walking merrily about the park with their calves and block your way at almost all junctions. Once a while meeting with a "the grizzly bear", the monsterous beast that everyone fears and is warned about yet that which left by itself is the most dear animal. And then a moose, that has the most beautiful horns I have every seen. The grand canyon of the Yellowstone which tells you the meaning of word "Grand" in its true sense. The mersmerizing shades of yellow in the Grand Canyon that probably gave this name "Yellowstone" to the whole area. All this beauty resides peacefully by the land where hell bubbles up, "the chemistry lab of nature", the geyser basins of Yellowstone.

2 days is not enough for Yellowstone, everyone said that. But we managed get a glimpse of all the major attractions of Yellowstone National Park in 2 days. Hiking was on Tarun's mind throughout the trip and so our first trip was to the Grand Canyon on Yellowstone. The canyon extends fron the Canyon Village to Tower Falls and we decided to hike up from Tower Falls. It turned out that was a bad decision and the true glimpses of the Grand Canyon could be enjoyed better from the Canyon Village end. But we still found a trail around Tower Falls to hike which did not last very long as we realized the area was too lonely and we never had adequate preparation for "the grizzly". We turned back and decided to check out the Canyon Village end and indeed while returning just a few yards from that place we saw a grizzly bear grazing around. I could never imagine that a grizzly bear would be that huge.

I was awestruck to see the beautifully sculpted Canyon of the Yellowstone river whose majestic aura was makes you actually praise the God for his creations. It may seem funny but the yellowstone river also appeared yellow in color to me. We hiked a little bit until it started raining and got dark. Then was the time to visit a geyser basin and we picked up Norris which was midway between the Canyon and our camp. This was the chemistry lab I was talking about. Steam, boiling hot water and those colorful formations around a hot spring formed by the elements from the earth were truly nature's wonder, something that I had never contemplated. By this time rain turned into snow and we had not eaten anything since morning and it was now late evening so we decided to take off and go back to the camp. One the way back we saw the roaring
mountain laden with geysers all around, roaring the steam off.

We woke up next day to a very beautiful day. The sunshine cheered the whole ambience and the mildly cold weather just great for another day out in the Yellowstone. We went back to finish the Norris Geyser Basin. In that beautiful sunny day, it is inexplicable how manifold the beauty of those hot springs and geysers was enhanced. I had been looking for the chocolate pots all through and there I found a small one (looked like not really chocolate but cement pot) bubbling up making funny noises. Next stop was the Mammoth Hot Springs and wow they were really mammoth. Mammoth Hot Springs were actually formed by the deposit of limestone by the hot springs over the course many years and I had never seen anything whiter than that on the main terrace of Mammoth. There was an interesting sculpture probably of stone called the liberty cap but I haven't got a chance to explore about it yet. We were just loving the sunshine but as we took of from Mammoth to drive by the Yellowstone Lake it started snowing, then turned sunny again, then rained a little bit and then snowed really heavily and that's what I would call a fickle weather. I read online that one needs to be prepared for any kind of weather in Yellowstone any time of the year and that was an example of it. While it was snowing heavily I got a chance to see the Mud Volcano (probably that was the chocolate pot or may be I never found those chocolate pots) and the churning cauldron which was actually churning at a scary speed. It's said that there had been 500 earthquakes in the past 10 years.

Our trip was coming to an end, just one day left which was most of the time to be spent in the car driving back to Seattle. One last attraction of Yellowstone, the Old Faithful, was the one on our list. This really faithful geryser erupted just a few minutes after we reached there. It did shoot up really tall. What an amazing sight.

"Rangers tell people to keep their distance from bison and steaming geysers. But there are no signs, aside from nature's own bubbling mud pots and geysers, that visitors are wandering through the caldera of one of the largest active volcanoes in the world." - National Geographic.

And that leaves me truly amazed.