Azure Pool

Different types of colored bacteria thrive at the varying water temperatures in Yellowstone's hot springs. It is this that lends them their beautiful colors.

Beauty pool ~ Panoramic

There is a great deal of thermal activity around Old Faithful geyser - Beauty pool is a ...well...beautiful example of one of the many springs and geysers one can easily walk to while waiting for Old Faithful to erupt.

Bison

Just a few days later we would see another Bison in a small pen in a Zoo in Madison, WI. I thought then about the relatively free animals we had seen in Yellowstone. Wolves, Elk, Moose and Grizzly bear also thrive here.

Economic Geyser

Another of the multi-hued pools of heated water in the vicinity of Old Faithful. It appears to have garnered it's name from it's energy-saving habit of doing nothing.

Forest fire smoke - Panoramic

What was already an odd scene became more surreal when the smoke from yet another forest fire obscured the sun and cast an eerie light over this large spring just north of Old Faithful.

Julie plays with fire

There is very little that can compete with a campfire.

Julie walks Norris Basin

There are a whole series of pictures I took of Norris Basin in Yellowstone Park, of which this is one. Whatever it is in me that is drawn to the desert of the southwest United States also finds beauty in some of the more desolate areas of this National Park.

Nigel nurturing his creation

Spending some quality time with my cigar, my campfire and myself.

Yellowstone - Collage

In many areas, shifts deep beneath the earths crust cause scalding hot, mineral rich water to erupt where flora once flourished. Dead trees are replaced with multicolored bacteria, the colors and shapes of which are made more poignant by the presence of the cycle of death and rebirth.

Nigel enjoys a cigar

Fresh air? Bah humbug!

Nigel enjoys a steam bath not so much

Standing near a large geyser in the morning, like this one at Black Sand Basin, one alternates rapidly between clouds of hot wet steam and blasts of cold dry air. It feels as though you've succumbed to some sort of feverish sickness. With the 'fresh air,' 'therapuetic' sleeping arrangements and now this sulphurous skin treatment I am beginning to think they should charge spa rates to enter Yellowstone.

This has become one of my favorite pictures from the park. Taken early on a cold morning on our way out of the park, it captures the otherwordly atmosphere of an at that time deserted Norris Basin.

Yellowstone falls

There are two very similar falls here in what they call the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. These are the upper falls. All human traffic is banned on the Yellow River and below the rim of the canyon.

Bacteria mat textures - collage

Examples of the bacteria that grows in the warm water flowing from the pools and geysers. I was struck by how much they look like satellite photos of the earth. Or perhaps Mars. NASA, if you're interested I can doctor these with tiny spacemen so you can claim to have landed on the Red Planet. Let the conspiracy theories begin...

Spasmodic Geyser - Panoramic

One can see the rolling boil many of these springs maintain towards the top of the right hand pool.

Wooden walkway

Norris Basin - to keep the land and the people from hurting each other, they have been separated by wooden walkways that often dissapear into the steam on cool and breezy mornings.

Old Faithful erupts