Yellowstone – land of geysers and hot springs

Yellowstone National Park is the first national park in the world, established in 1872. It is known for the many geysers and hot springs as well as for the diverse wildlife that can be seen here like bisons, grizzlies, black bears, wolfs and so on.

The park actually stands on the crater of a volcano that erupted millions of years ago. Nowadays the area is still hit by numerous earthquakes daily but the majority of them cannot be felt.

The geysers in the park are a spectacular phenomenon of nature and they erupt by throwing water in the air, some of them a couple of times per day. What amazed me is that some eruptions can be predicted with a precision of +-10 minutes. For example, the Old Faithful Geyser erupted at the exact predicted time. When you get close to the time of eruption a lot of people gather around the geyser to watch the show.

The hot springs sometimes form a very colorful picture because the colors are given by the different algae and bacteria which can live in extreme conditions near the spring. The nicest ones that we saw are the Grand Prismatic and the Morning Glory Pool.

Other impressive pictures were the ones of the Yellowstone Canyon with 2 out of the total 300 waterfalls in the park and the Yellowstone lake which is the biggest lake at high altitude in North America.

In the park are two main valleys known for wildlife. Here we saw a lot of bisons which sometimes walk on the road near the cars, bears and deers.

On the second evening, thanks to a very good recommendation from Thomas Hug, a friend of mine, we had dinner at a typical mountain lodge in Yellowstone. Here they have a lot of typical dishes for this region and we tasted bison steak and elk medallions which were very delicious.

One amazing thing we’ve seen or done

I can say that the whole park is amazing but because I’m also a “picture hunter” I would choose the Grand Prismatic Spring as the highlight of the Yellowstone. It’s just one of those places where I could take hundreds of pictures but don’t worry, I uploaded just three. Take a look at the amazing colors.