Adventures into the wild take us to the most extraordinary places. You will find narrative and photo records of our adventures on our blog. We look forward to your input on the blog articles as we are constantly tracking wildlife sightings across North America.
Our first family trip into the wilderness was in 2012. We visited Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands. In all, the trip was amazing!
The photo gallery here is the first photo gallery ever put together for this website. It consists of our adventures across trail ridge road in Rocky Mountain National Park. The road, constructed in 1921, passes across the northern portion of the Park’s high country. The adventure spends almost twenty miles above the tree line reaching altitudes over 12,000 feet.
Prior to the road construction, Trail Ridge had been used by Native Americans to cross the mountains between their home lands in the west and hunting areas on the east side. Arapahoe Indians called the trail located on the ridge as “taienbaa” (“Where the Children Walked”) because it was so steep that children could not be carried, but had to walk. The Ute tribe crossing the mountains at Forest Canyon Pass marked their route with stone cairns. The present park Ute Trail follows partially that ancient route.
On the west side, about 1880, a wagon road was constructed along the Kawuneeche Valley from the town of Grand Lake to the mining camps of Lulu City and Gaskill. The camps were abandoned after a few years when short-lived mining boom ended and later the road was used only occasionally by hunters and tourists.
The pictures here were taken on our adventure, the last week of June, 2012. We hope you enjoy them, and plan on making your own trip to this amazing natural wonder in the middle of our great country.
The Yellowstone Park bison herd in Yellowstone National Park is probably the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Yellowstone is known for its geothermal activity and large mammals, especially elk, wolves, American bison, bears, pronghorns, moose and bighorn sheep.
The Yellowstone Park bison herd was estimated in 2015 to be 4,900 bison. The bison in the Yellowstone Park bison herd are American bison of the Plains bison subspecies. Yellowstone National Park may be the only location in the United States where free-ranging bison were never extirpated, since they continued to exist in the wild and were not re-introduced, as has been done in most other bison herd areas.
The geothermal areas of Yellowstone include several geyser basins in Yellowstone National Park as well as other geothermal features such as hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles. The number of thermal features in Yellowstone is estimated at 10,000. A study that was completed in 2011 found that a total of 1,283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone, 465 of which are active during an average year. These are distributed among nine geyser basins, with a few geysers found in smaller thermal areas throughout the Park. The number of geysers in each geyser basin are as follows: Upper Geyser Basin (410), Midway Geyser Basin (59), Lower Geyser Basin (283), Norris Geyser Basin (193), West Thumb Geyser Basin (84), Gibbon Geyser Basin (24), Lone Star Geyser Basin (21), Shoshone Geyser Basin (107), Heart Lake Geyser Basin (69), other areas (33). Although famous large geysers like Old Faithful are part of the total, most of Yellowstone’s geysers are small, erupting to only a foot or two. The hydrothermal system that supplies the geysers with hot water sits within an ancient active caldera. Many of the thermal features in Yellowstone build up sinter, geyserite, or travertine deposits around and within them.
The various geyser basins are located where rainwater and snowmelt can percolate into the ground, get indirectly superheated by the underlying Yellowstone hotspot, and then erupt at the surface as geysers, hot springs, and fumaroles. Thus flat-bottomed valleys between ancient lava flows and glacial moraines are where most of the large geothermal areas are located. Smaller geothermal areas can be found where fault lines reach the surface, in places along the circular fracture zone around the caldera, and at the base of slopes that collect excess groundwater. Due to the Yellowstone Plateau‘s high elevation the average boiling temperature at Yellowstone’s geyser basins is 199 °F (93 °C). When properly confined and close to the surface it can periodically release some of the built-up pressure in eruptions of hot water and steam that can reach up to 390 feet (120 m) into the air (see Steamboat Geyser, the world’s tallest geyser). Water erupting from Yellowstone’s geysers is superheated above that boiling point to an average of 204 °F (95.5 °C) as it leaves the vent. The water cools significantly while airborne and is no longer scalding hot by the time it strikes the ground, nearby boardwalks, or even spectators. Because of the high temperatures of the water in the features it is important that spectators remain on the boardwalks and designated trails. Several deaths have occurred in the park as a result of falls into hot springs.
Prehistoric Native American artifacts have been found at Mammoth Hot Springs and other geothermal areas in Yellowstone. Some accounts state that the early people used hot water from the geothermal features for bathing and cooking. In the 19th century Father Pierre-Jean De Smet reported that natives he interviewed thought that geyser eruptions were “the result of combat between the infernal spirits.”[5] The Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled north of the Yellowstone area in 1806. Local natives that they came upon seldom dared to enter what we now know is the caldera because of frequent loud noises that sounded like thunder and the belief that the spirits that possessed the area did not like human intrusion into their realm. The first white man known to travel into the caldera and see the geothermal features was John Colter, who had left the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He described what he saw as “hot spring brimstone.” Beaver trapper Joseph Meek recounted in 1830 that the steam rising from the various geyser basins reminded him of smoke coming from industrial smokestacks on a cold winter morning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the 1850s famed trapper Jim Bridger called it “the place where Hell bubbled up.”
We made a family visit to Yellowstone and captured the beauty and power of the geothermal events. A gallery from the trip is posted below. Remember that all of our pictures are provided herein with permission to be copied or reproduced to support the preservation and development of natural habitat in North America.
State Forest State Park near Walden, Colorado, is one of the most amazing creations of natural beauty in North America.
In the ultimate rugged Colorado, State Forest State Park offers visitors 71,000 acres of forest, jagged peaks, alpine lakes, wildlife and miles of trails. The park stretches along the west side of the Medicine Bow Mountains and into the north end of the Never Summer Range. In all this vast space, the park offers barely over 150 campsites, which means that you will see much more of nature, and much less of humanity, during your stay. We have hiked several of the trails there now, and visited many of the beautiful Alpine Lakes in the park. More than anything, we have seen wildlife barely to be found elsewhere in North America.
The wildlife common to the park includes bear, mountain lion, coyotes, and thousands of other species. But Moose is their claim to fame. North Park is considered the moose viewing capital of Colorado, with over 600 moose to be observed year-round.
The last two summers we have ventured there and have begun to collect some amazing moments. We have created a new gallery including some of our precious collection. Enjoy!
