Thursday, September 16, 2010

MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS


Leaving Old Faithful Inn and their bison (yes, he is in the parking lot area) behind, we did more sightseeing of the park, heading north.

Old Faithful Inn was built in the winter of 1903-1904.  The chimney lobby is formed by 500 tons of hand quarried lava block, stands 80 feet high and has 8 fireplaces!  They do things big in the west!










Mammoth Hot Springs (Lower and Upper Terraces) is one of the best examples of travertine-depositing hot springs.  The Shoshone and Bannock tribes collected minerals from MHS for white paint.  The color you see is created by thermophiles (heat-loving microorganisms) living in the hot water flows.  The hottest water and heat-loving thermophiles create the colorless and yellow colors while the orange, brown and green thermophiles live in the cooler water.



Living sculpture!


The weather turned colder. Rainy, cloudy skies, colder temperatures had us layering our clothes and hoodies, putting on gloves and hats and spending time warming up in the car in between walks.


    

Desolate beauty.  The trees leached up the poisonous minerals until they had "bobby-socks" feet, white-washed and pale as winter.  Eventually, wind and snow toppled them.  The landscape was littered with remains which looked like dry, white bones scattered under trees which had yet to fall.  




















4 comments:

debwardart said...

Lots of good info you are giving us! And loving more of the photos - mine are "slides" (remember those!!!) Maybe this winter we'll get them out and have a slideshow - haven't looked at them in years!

RH Carpenter said...

Yes, I remember slides - only because Jerry has a lot of them! ha ha A slide show doesn't sound too bad to me :)

Jeanette Jobson said...

Fabulous images of this area. I really do need to go see this in person. The colours and landscape are amazing.

RH Carpenter said...

Jeanette, we took so many photos - not sure what we'll do with them other than remember this trip in years to come, but the landscape was rough, sparse, rugged, and downright ugly in some places - but the sulfer pools, puddles that bubbled up, and geysers that spewed many feet into the air were worth seeing.