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Back
in the
Lower
48
(south from Alaska)
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We
had only planned to spend two days, but after spending the entire
day exploring just one of the loops and its side roads, we decided
it would be ridiculous to be this close and not see more, and we
wanted to go back through the upper loop that held the Minerva Terraces
and the little interesting roads that offshoot from it.
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Minerva
Terrace
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Of
course, we stopped at Old Faithful who remained faithful and put
on its show for us. I enjoyed reading another 1870 account of
its spouting off:
"We
were convinced that there was not on the globe another region
where … nature had crowded so much of grandeur and majesty
with so much of novelty and wonder. Judge, then, of our astonishment
on entering this basin, to see at no great distance before us
an immense body of sparkling water, projected suddenly and with
terrific force into the air to the height of over one hundred
feet…"
It
was another example of thinking I had known what something was all
about, but realizing I knew nothing until I had witnessed it with
my own two eyes.
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In
Anchorage I had a bear in my backyard. Here in Yellowstone we had
buffalo moseying through our front yard this morning. I glanced
out my front window and saw a big brown hump going by. As I got
up for a closer look, I couldn't believe there were six buffalo
strolling down my driveway! As I stepped carefully outside onto
my front step, one turned and looked at me, but kept right on trucking
down the road. I was happy I got some good pictures as proof of
my unusual neighbors in Yellowstone.
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wound up seeing several individual and then several herds of them
as we drove around today. Once when I stopped to get gas, a man at
the station said that up ahead there was a "buffalo jam"
- a usual occurrence in the park when those big guys decide to take
a stroll within view of the road. |
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It
was also interesting to see the result of nature's way of clearing
underbrush for better forest growth. The big fire of 1988 affected
38% of the park and the charred trees and the "stubs"
(the dead but still not fallen ones) still abound throughout large
areas. However, also in evidence is the new growth trees that were
naturally reseeded by the fire and mom said it is a perfect picture
of the cycle of life - the old dying and the young taking their
place.
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