Once in a Lifetime

Road Trip ~ To Bend and Beyond

After the dramatic vistas and high alpine experience of Glacier National Park, I was unprepared to experience an equally jaw-dropping beauty of a completely different kind. Yellowstone National Park is a legend in its own right and it lived up to its reputation. The size, the scenery, the mountains, the meadows, the forests, the rivers, the lakes, and the diversity of wildlife would be enough ~ but Yellowstone is not content to merely deliver wow when it can deliver WOW. And that extra something special? The geysers and their other-worldly effect on the landscape.

With geysers literally dotting the landscape of this huge park, one area in particular, the Norris Geyser Basin, stands out. The rangers have built a wooden walkway that meanders by bubbling geysers and over their rushing streams. The color of the water is Hawaii blue but the hot steam smells of sulfur not fragrant plumeria. Walking through the landscape is a bit eerie, like walking on some distant planet. The geysers in this area don’t often erupt but they spew steady steam and their display is worth stopping for.

Of course, everyone goes to Yellowstone to view the showy display of Old Faithful, a geyser that goes off with almost hourly regularity day after day. It is so faithful, that a large complex of lodges, restaurants and a visitor center have been constructed in the vicinity to accommodate the thousands of tourists who come annually for the show. There are at least a dozen or more geysers in the same area and the effect is kind of spooky.

waiting for Old Faithful

But today, today was a very special day. So special, in fact, that the park rangers were encouraging everyone to leave their waiting posts for Old Faithful and to rush over to watch Gigantus as it prepared to explode. True to its name, Gigantus erupts with an even larger plume and more impressive display than Old Faithful ~ but unlike Mr. Regularity, Gigantus erupts very infrequently, perhaps two or three times a year. Its last display was in May, and here, on the very day that we visited, Gigantus chose to erupt again. The rangers were so excited that they were taking their own photos and videos along with the rest of us. And as Gigantus erupted, so did smaller, nearby geysers that normally remain dormant. While Old Faithful puts on its display for about 5 minutes at a time, Gigantus will erupt for the better part of a day, alternating hourly between heavy bursts of water and steam, and just steam roaring incessantly out of is natural smokestack.

Old Faithful smoking in the foreground getting ready to erupt but~

Gigantgus is in the background smoking and boiling like a large cauldron and look what happened

Can we say WOW, WOW, WOW !!!??? Nature put on a spectacular display, and we were reverently in awe and even a bit giddy. And like every other kid in the park, we topped off our big day with a yummy cone of huckleberry icecream.

We would like to make our next visit in the winter. That’s when large game such as elk, bear and bison come down from the high country to over-winter in the flat lands. The park roads are closed down to outside traffic but guided tours can go in by snow mobile or snow cat. I bet it’s a mystical landscape that’s a marvel to behold.