Yellowstone National Park - Days 63 - 65

Yellowstone was a great experience. Most of you have heard about Yellowstone's unique features; Old Faithful geyser probably comes to mind. People come to Yellowstone to see the thermal features and the animals. There are only three places in the world where you can see concentrations of geysers and other th
ermal features: New Zealand, Eastern Russia, and Yellowstone. Of these locations, Yellowstone has more features than the other two combined. In fact, we learned that some of New Zealand's thermal features have ceased because the government decided to use the thermal energy for electrical power generation, which has disrupted the natural heat release that had occurred.
My personal favorite thermal feature are the mud pots. The kids just laughed as they watched the gas try to release through thick mud. If you ever visit Yellowstone, don't miss the Artists' Paint Pots. 

Our first day at Yellowstone was an excellent day for animal sightings. We witnessed Bison as close as 4 feet from the car, huge bull elk about 25 yards away, and a mother bear with three cubs about 50 yards from the road. We packed in a full day, which included a ranger talk about the Yellowstone Lake (ended at 10:30pm). The Cutthroat Trout is facing extinction because of an invasive species (Lake Trout). At one measuring spot they had over 70,000 of the Cutthroat Trout in 1970, but only 471 left 5 years ago. The Lake Trout invaded sometime in the 1980s or 1990s and have taken over the lake. In order to try and help the situation, they pay a company to commercial fish and kill about 300,000 Lake Trout per summer just to give the Cutthroat Trout a chance of survival. 

One of my favorite activities was hiking through the meadows. Unlike many of the other national parks, in Yellowstone you can blaze your own trail as long as you don't walk near the thermal areas. 

I really wanted to see wolves, so Levi, Seth, and I set out through the meadows blazing on our own trail looking for a herd of elk. The ranger told me that the wolves follow the elk, so the key to seeing wolves was to first find the elk. Unfortunately, we didn't see either, but we saw many bison, one even started approaching us slowly, but it turned out he just wanted to graze in our direction (whew!).