, in case you don't have time to look at everything.During our week in Yellowstone National Park at the beginning of June, we took a ton of photographs. I've created thumbnail images of many of them, so that you can see the full-sized version of only the ones that look interesting to you.
Also, I've marked the best photos with , in case you don't have time to look at everything.
Mammoth Hot Springs is an area in the northwest part of the park. We spent our first three nights in a cabin there, cooking on a little gas camping stove on the lawn (lawn?!?) in front of our cabin, going on hikes through the nearby areas, and driving around the north end of the park. (Our last two nights were spent in another cabin near Old Faithful.)
In the Mammoth area, there are bizarre hot springs which leave large amounts of mineral deposits, creating beautiful, terraced white & yellow hills.
 A very good view of the terraced hot springs. |
 The hot springs above the valley. (The red is a camera problem.) |
 A little travertine hill in the snow. |
 The lodge right near our cabin. |
This is a spectacular valley in the east part of the park.
A beautiful view of the valley. |
 Another nice view. |
 Competing beauties. |
 The river through the valley. |
 More river. |
 Waterfall (duh). |
 Valley and waterfall. |
 The valley walls have a lovely reddish tint. |
Everywhere we went, there would be ponds and rivers with steam rising from them -- and some were actually boiling!
 Roaring Mountain is a mountainside covered with hot springs. Its name comes from the fact that in the late 1800s, the escaping steam caused a loud whistling sound. |
An astonishing scene which you get used to after a while: a plain with a river, and huge plumes of steam. This is a view of the Artist's Paint Pot area. |
A mudpot at the Artist's Paint Pot. I didn't time my shot very well, but this six-foot-diameter hole had one little spot in the center where, every few seconds, mud would burp up: sploop! sploop! sploop! |
Another mud pot, but this one with hundreds of little bubbles. |
 Old Faithful. Shoots a couple hundred feet in the air. |
 Old Faithful and some silly tourists. |
 Near Old Faithful are dozens more geysers, such as these ones. |
We saw amazing numbers of animals in Yellowstone. Seeing them was definitely one of the best parts of the trip.
 Definitely a highlight of the trip: Bears! A momma with two cubs! (Picture is fuzzy due to long zoom.) We almost didn't see bears at all: this was on our last day, and we had actually driven out of the park on our way to the airport, but then the road briefly re-enters a corner of the park. That's when we saw a long row of cars pulled over quietly watching. |
 Another shot of the bears, not quite as good as the other. |
A field with dozens of buffalo (aka bison), hangin' out. A cute widdle baby bison. |
 Same area as the previous photo. Another cute widdle baby. These bison were right near the parking lot, so we stayed in the car and snapped away. When we turned to leave the parking lot, a few bison decided to wander into the street. They're bigger than us, so they won: we waited for 'em. |
 Do you remember the comic strip Tumbleweeds from the '70s? There was a character, an Indian, named Bucolic Buffalo. And I think I found him: he retired to Yellowstone. |
 This was one of the first things we saw when we got to the park: six elk lounging on the lawn in front of the Mammoth Hot Springs lodge! |
 An elk grazing in the snowy woods. |
 People getting a closer look at an elk. |
 A marmot by the road. |
 A coyote. |
Both of us adored the Morning Glory pool -- this was one of our favorite things in Yellowstone. This is a deep pool of hot, steaming water, which has a spectacular blueish color, with yellow bacteria growing around its less hot outer rim.
Man, this thing is stunning. You can see about 20 feet down. |
 More competing beauties. |
Another angle. |
 Morning Mikey. |
 A beautiful "artsy" shot by Margaret... |
 ...and one by Mike. |
 The resilience of nature. In 1988, Yellowstone was hit by massive forest fires, which burned 45% of the park. Even now, ten years later, you can drive for miles and see dead trees, such as these; but notice the flourishing young trees which are growing up to take their place. |
 Mike the chef, cooking in front of our little cabin near Old Faithful. Note the fire extinguisher!!! Verrrry important; see below. |
The title of this web page promised adventures. Here they are.
The fire extinguisher in that last photo turned out to be critically important. We noticed it when we first arrived at our cabin, and commented on how many fire extinguishers there were -- every third cabin or so had one -- and how big they were.
Later that same night, at around 9:30, Margaret went out to make the 75-foot walk to the bathrooms. Another woman was headed the same way. When they were just two cabins away from the cabin Margaret and I were staying in, the other woman said, "Oh my God, there's a huge fire in that cabin!" Margaret looked, and through the window she could see a 3- or 4-foot-high fire, reaching from a tabletop to the ceiling.
Margaret said, "I have a fire extinguisher!" The other woman said, "I'll get help!" The other woman -- who we later learned has two bad knees! -- ran all the way to the main lodge to get help. Meanwhile, Margaret sprinted back to our cabin; pounded on the door to get my attention; and then, before I even opened the door, she grabbed the very heavy extinguisher and, with the help of a huge boost of adrenaline, hauled it full-speed back to the fire.
The pounding on the door sounded urgent, so I hopped up and opened it, but already Margaret was gone. At first I thought, "Oh, kids just fooling around" -- but then, just before closing the door, I saw her hustling down the path in the darkness. I rushed after her, and got to the cabin just in time to see the fire, which was now only (!) about 1-1/2 feet high, and to hear Margaret say, "I don't know how to use this, but I'm gonna give it a try!" The guy in the cabin, who was incredibly embarrassed about the whole thing, said, "No no, I've got it out." So Margaret didn't get to pull the trigger. The fire went out shortly after that.
It turns out this idiot had been using a camping stove in his cabin. There are signs posted everywhere saying not to do that. Worse, we think he tampered with the smoke detector! The cabin was full of smoke, but his detector didn't go off.
Shortly thereafter, two big firetrucks and an ambulance raced up. They were pretty quick to arrive, but they were no match for Margaret's speed. They were extremely angry with the guy in the cabin. He probably got fined.
You'd think that would be enough excitement for one trip. But nooooooo. Our return flight was on a small (perhaps 40-passenger) two-engine Horizon Air jet from Bozeman, MT, to Seattle, stopping on Great Falls, MT. About 30 minutes into the Great Falls-Seattle leg, the left engine suddenly started making a very loud noise: "BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz......" The noise faded out, and we all tried to ignore it.
Five minutes later, the captain said, "Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you heard that noise from an engine a few minutes ago. We seem to be having a few problems with one of the engines. It's not really a problem, but just to be on the safe side, we're going to stop in Spokane and check it out, after which we'll continue on our way." He was doing his best to make it seem like No Big Deal so that people wouldn't panic; but actually, we later learned that the engine had completely gone out for some reason.
Fortunately, even those little planes are quite safe, and the plane is fully capable of running on just one engine. In fact, we didn't even feel any kind of bump at all when the engine went out.
The flight attendants were also trying to keep people from panicking, but they were clearly nervous: one of them spilled a Coke on Margaret. When the other one told us to fasten our seatbelts, his voice was edgy: "Fasten your seatbelts VERY LOW around your waist and VERY TIGHT."
The pilot said there would be emergency vehicles on the ground, but "Don't worry, that's just as a precaution." The landing was flawless -- very smooth.
It turned out the pilot lied when he said we'd continue on our way after stopping in Spokane. Horizon was busily rebooking people on other flights to Seattle. But Margaret and I were pretty shaken up by the whole experience, and decided we didn't feel like getting on another small plane just then. It's a four-hour drive from Spokane to Seattle if you don't stop. So we just rented a car and drove, getting home a little after midnight. The car rental place even gave us a Cadillac.