Back to Yellowstone – Paint Pots, Geysers and Fumaroles

October 27, 2010 by 4 Comments

So here we are back at the Fountain Paint Pot Basin in Yellowstone National Park after a brief foray into the Heartland. I don’t think I have ever taken as many photographs as I did at Yellowstone, but then I’ve never seen such a densely covered wonderland of steaming fumaroles, gurgling mud pools, and shooting geysers, all surrounded by autumn’s glorious color.  After we visited Yellowstone, we went to eight more National Parks and Monuments, including Zion and the Grand Canyon, so there are many more photographs of other wonders of nature coming soon to Seeded Earth.

I figure this is a good time, anyway, to show off the beauty in the National Parks in autumn, because autumn’s color in Wisconsin is taking it on the chin with today’s weather. By nightfall, much of our autumn color will be soggy and on the ground. So, here is more from Yellowstone and beyond.

Sliex Springs on the Fountain Paint Pot Loop in Yellowstone

Silex Spring © 2010 Bo Mackison

The Fountain Paint Pot Basin features several pools, a half dozen geysers, and the largest collection of “paint pots” in Yellowstone. A boardwalk makes observing these wonders not only convenient, but also safe. There are warning signs all over the park asking visitors not to leave the marked paths. Thermal areas are unstable and more than one person has suffered serious injuries when stepping on ground that collapses into a thermal feature.

Just by looking at the pools, it is hard to accurately judge their depths. Silex Spring is about 35 feet by 40 feet on the surface. The hot springs are so clear is some places, it seems as if they are only a few feet deep — misleading. Its deepest area is over 27 feet. The name “Silex” probably refers to the silica composition of the pool, though there are park historians that claim the pool was named after a gurgling coffee pot called the Silex.

Noisy Fumaroles © 2010 Bo Mackison

When the water table is high, geysers spout quite continuously in this bacteria laden pool. When less water is available, the pool is deep brown in color from a high bacteria count, and noisy fumaroles pop along the surface. A fumarole is a geyser that does not reach the surface of the earth, so it only emits hot steam and gases above ground.

Silica and clay form popping "paint pots" in Yellowstone National Park

Fountain Paint Pots © 2010 Bo Mackison

These fountain paint pots bubble on the surface. plop, plop, plop. See the recipe below which was provided on an information sign at the Paint Pots exhibit in Yellowstone.

Recipe for Mudpots © 2010 Bo Mackison

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Photography Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Iron Spring Creek – Sunrise at Yellowstone National Park

October 7, 2010 by 12 Comments
Geyserite Mound with Runoff into Iron Spring Creek at Yellowstone
Iron Spring Creek © 2010 Bo Mackison

This mound of geyserite to the left of the creek indicates that there have been geysers in this part of Yellowstone National Park for eons.

The run off from pools and geysers in the Black Sand Geyser Basin flows into Iron Spring Creek. The reddish-brown color of the creek, however, is not from iron, but from a reddish brown algae that is present in the creek because of thermal warming.

This is another sunrise photograph.

The temperature had dropped to 28˚F on this early October morning, and so there was a magnificent display of steaming hot pools in the basin. The early light bathed the whole area in luminous beauty.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , ,

Diablo Lake in North Cascades National Park

June 16, 2010 by 14 Comments

Diablo Lake in North Cascades National Park © 2010 Bo Mackison

We took an unexpected side trip to the Cascades. As we were driving from Seattle to Vancouver, we saw the Cascades Highway and had to go check out the National Park. We ended up spending the night, getting a bit away from our planned trip. That just makes the trip that much more of an adventure, that much more fun!

And our family collects visits to the National Parks and Monuments the way other families collect coupons.

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Travel Tagged With: , , , ,

Mt. Rainier from Paradise

June 15, 2010 by 11 Comments
Mt. Rainier National Park, View from Paradise Visitor Center

Mt. Rainier from Paradise © 2010 Bo Mackison

We were lucky. “The mountain is out,” they kept telling us as we were getting ready to drive to Mt. Rainier National Park from Seattle. And so yes, we drove to Mt. Rainier National Park and the skies were clear and all the mountains were snowy and shining in their glory. It was the first day of good snow melt, and the waterfalls and rivers were all rushing and gushing!

We entered the Nisqually Entrance, arriving about 9 am, then drove up towards Paradise.  We stopped way too many times to count for photographs, also for a stroll through the lobby at the historic National Park Inn, a hike to Christine Falls, then lunch at the lovely Paradise Inn.

After checking out the Paradise Visitor Center (very modern, very cool — as in temperature!) where I photographed the above shot of Mt. Rainier, we hiked the Box Canyon trail, took another several hundred photos — the mountain was OUT! — and then gawked and gawked as we walked the Grove of the Patriarchs Trail (giant trees, boardwalk, icy rushing river from snow melt!)

We finally exited the park on the Mather Memorial Parkway in the northeast corner of the park about 9 pm and headed back to Seattle — exhausted but happy! Good thing we were exploring in mid-June and taking advantage of some of the longest days of the year.

Paradise is the name of an area of Mt. Rainier NP which is approximately at 5,400 feet on the 14,000+ south slope of Mount Rainier. Evidently Paradise is the most popular destination for visitors to Mount Rainier National Park, it was jammed with people, but we didn’t stop there long.

There was too much to see elsewhere. There were plenty of people playing in the snow at Paradise though, as seen in the photograph.

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Travel Tagged With: , , ,

Petrified Wood for Sale

November 7, 2008 by 5 Comments
Petrified Wood for Sale

Petrified Wood © 2008 Bo Mackison

My way of thinking, this is a lot of money for an old (thought, granted, very old) piece of tree. Someone must buy the stuff, or they wouldn’t have such big piles of it. The ranger at the entrance to the Petrified Forest National Park did say that the people from Jim Gray’s Petrified Wood Company in Holbrook, Arizona ran a reputable shop–unlike some nearby store keepers who illegally remove the rocks from the park to sell.

Petrified Logs in Petrified Forest National Park

Petrified Logs in Petrified Forest National Park © 2008 Bo Mackison

So how much would one of these logs cost if they were for sale? Well, we’ll never know, because they aren’t available for purchase. They are located in the National Park.

~~~

In response to a Marcie’s question in the comments below, here are some facts about petrified wood that you might not know:

Petrified wood is permineralized wood (as in permanently mineralized) and it is a fossil from a family of trees now extinct in the Northern Hemisphere. The trees are still found in a very few places in the Southern Hemisphere. During the Late Triassic Period – 248 to 206 million years ago – this Arizona desert region was tropical. During seasonal flooding, trees were swept into sandy river channels, and then periodically buried by layers of gravelly sand and volcanic ash.

The ash, which is a source of silica, permineralized the buried wood, replacing the wood with silica. Red iron oxide and pink manganese deposits added coloring in the fossil. Voila!

Petrified wood, of course, didn’t occur overnight. The ocean receded over 60 million years ago, and the wood gradually turned into mineral fossils. Awesome stuff, this geology.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , ,
« Previous Page