[2014-colorado]
Good Morning Nebraska!
Cody went from super sleepy cutie to wrestling and throwing in less than five minutes. We had our first non-cooking breakfast of cereal this morning to get an early start on the day. We are hoping to hit a few touristy spots in Nebraska today and get to see my brother in Colorado tonight.
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[2013-western-us]
The kids were super helpers taking the tent down and cleaning up camp today.
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[2013-western-us]
Scott rolled out of the tent a little after six for a fifteen mile bike ride along the Crater’s of the Moon Loop Road, twice. We had a light sprinkling of rain at about 7:30. Which I only mention because we had gone “topless” again last night. The rain was just enough to rinse off the half inch of dust that had accumulated on the outside of the tent since being in western Oregon.
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[2013-western-us]
Scott went for a twenty-one mile bike ride in some pretty cold weather. He said it was definitely the coldest ride he has been on during this trip.
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[2013-western-us]
Old Faithful
We had impeccable timing for Old Faithful. As we were nearing the visitor’s center we noticed the large crowd and discovered that the eruptions was “imminent.” While we waited for a few minutes the kids worked on their junior ranger activities. While parking in the visitor’s center parking lot we spotted a raven attempting to break into a motorcyclist’s bag. The ranger program the other night on birds warned that the super smart ravens were frequently seen breaking into motorcyclist’s packs in parking lots. In fact, one raven managed to open a pack, open the Ziploc bag to a sandwich and even took the onions out of the sandwich before flying away with his feast. 213 of the Earth’s geysers are in Yellowstone. Yellowstone is actually a gigantic volcano that collapsed into a caldera. (Does this theme sound familiar? Crater Lake, Newberry Volcano…) The caldera of Yellowstone is forty miles wide and formed 640,000 years ago when a violent eruption emptied the volcano’s magma chamber. Yellowstone is sitting atop an active hotspot. Magma sits 3-5 miles below Yellowstone warming the water in the geothermal features potentially up to seven hundred degrees before the water comes to the surface. Norris is the hottest water feature in Yellowstone at 190 degrees on the surface. Even more than being hot, some pools of water in Yellowstone contain acid. The sulfur caldron is so acidic it can dissolve flesh. It is estimated that Old Faithful empties 4-8,000 gallons of water each time it erupts.
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[2013-western-us]
We don’t know how long the Indian Pond Trail in Yellowstone was, but we are pretty sure it was our longest hike thus far on this trip (We later found out that it is called the Storm Point trail and is about 2 miles long). Cody was super tough on this hike. We started this hike at 3:45 and ended by 5. He didn’t cry at all or even ask to get picked up. Cody and Brooke ran the first ten minutes of this hike. I couldn’t believe they still had any energy left for the rest of the hike. Indian Pond is not just a normal pond. It is more evidence of geothermal activity. The sign stated that the ancient geyser had experienced “hydrothermal blowout.” Instead of releasing steam gradually the ground water flashed to steam so violently that it blasted out hundreds of feet of overlying rock that still lines the pond.
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[2013-western-us]
We woke up to a chilly morning around seven thousand feet in Lewis Lake Campground inside Yellowstone. After breakfast we headed to the Tetons. On our way to the Tetons we saw Moose Falls. While we were there a woman pointed out an osprey to us. We wound up seeing another osprey flying at our afternoon hike back in Yellowstone at Indian Pond.
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