Yellowstone National Park: Lake Yellowstone/West Thumb

May 29-June 1

Travelling north from the Tetons in about 50 miles you enter the south entrance of Yellowstone National Park. I have to say that this was my third time to visit Yellowstone. So I have covered all parts of this very large park. I stayed at Old Faithful, Mammoth Springs, and Canyon. Over the 4 days, I think I drove 500 miles all within the park.

Yellowstone was explored by Native American for over 11,000 years. Organized exploration began in the 1860’s and was the first National Park established by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. The park spans an area of 3,500 square miles. Yellowstone is located on top a super volcano consisting of four over lapping caldera. The last super eruption occurred 640,000 thousand years ago. The whole park is sitting on top of a huge magma chamber relatively close to the surface and gives rise to all of the thermal features. Old Faithful sits on top of the center purple spot. If there is a super volcano eruption, it would wipe out most of the western states in an ash cloud. More than you want to know can be found in Wikipedia.

The first stop is at Lewis Falls before the entrance to the park along with an early morning mist pond, first views of steam vents, and a bison along the road.

The next collection of photos is on the east side of the park from West Thumb all the way to Canyon and back again, The route is mostly alongside of the west side of Yellowstone Lake. There are steam vents along side of the lake in quite a few places.

This is called Fishing Bridge and leads to the east entrance from Cody. I found a young male elk along side of the road.

There are very nice views along the lake.

The West Thumb Geyser Basin is essentially what you come to first from the south entrance, but I had skipped it earlier to go up along side Yellowstone Lake. There are a number of hot springs but really no geysers. This is the Abyss Pool and the prettiest of them all.