Our route down to Utah took a minor detour over to Bozeman, Montana to visit our old friend Mark Skidmore. Enroute we had to make a stop in eastern Washington's scablands. This landscape is the product of catastrophic ice age floods that swept away everything in its path. Perhaps the most magnificent feature of these events is Dry Falls where the flood waters once tumbled over and etched away at layers of basalt. The amount of water released during these glacial floods is estimated to equal 10 times the flow of all the rivers in the world! A staggering figure!
From our base in Bozeman we explored the museum of the Rockies and headed down to Yellowstone National Park via Paradise valley and the Yellowstone River. While not everything is open or accessible in the park at this time of year, it is not a bad time to visit as there is virtually no one around except the bison and antelope. We spent a couple of hours walking around the Mammoth Hotsprings travertine deposits in awe of it's stunning beauty.
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| Dry Falls |
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| Earily quiet now |
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| Blue Coeur d'Alene |
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| Yellowstone spring tourists |
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| Mammoth Hotsprings |
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| Group photo with Skids at Mammoth |
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| death by travertine |
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| bacteria |
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| An ever evolving landscape |
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| Precipitate |
Great pics, guys nice work!
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