yellow stone and teton
wented to yellow stone national park over the past weekend (4th of July weekend in oosa). probably one of the most spectcular national parks i have been to (zyon national park, grand canyon - north rim and yosemite give it a good run for it's money).the national park is a strange mix of spectacular to very saddening.
firstest the spectacular - the park is a large bed of volcanic activity, which leads to a lot of hot springs and steam spewing from different parts and corners of the ground/water/rocks etc. this steam and boiling water all over the place mixes with the minerals to create pond, puddles, deep pools of water in so many different colors, right from deep blue to shit yellow (seriously it looks gross). two of the strangest springs - one mixes with minerals in a strange way to create gases which are in different colors almost like a jeetendar movie with colors being thrown around from fat pots (just needed fat jaya prada to dance around them), the second one is called mammoth springs - here the water keeps bubbling over to build these huge calcium like deposits which would form odd shaped steps, each with a small puddle of hot water. anything falling into these waters would over time become part of the hot spring. first getting covered with a white calciom like deposit and later sulphur filled bacteria forming odd shaped and colored formations on it - all very p-cyc-a-delic.
there was also the 'old faithful' this is a hot spring which every 70 to 80 minutes spews out 32000 litres of water sky high. it is so regular (hence the name). first thing that came to mind when I saw this was 'viagra'.
now for the saddening part. the park had a very large fire in 1988 which literally burnt away 1000s and 1000s of sq meters of trees. now all the trees that were burnt were cut down but for lack of money the logs were left where they are. kinda made me feel like it was a large graveyard of trees. in other parts where the dead trees were not cut down it looked like fields after fields of dead soldiers all lined up. all very morose.
also went to grand teton natinal park for two days. grand teton gets it's name from the three tallest peaks in the teton range (which is part of the rockies). teton means tits in french. so the park is literally named after three tits (teton la terre).
this park did not have as many dead trees or logs which was heartening. saw many wild buffalo, koyotes, mule deer, white tail, bald eagles, canada goose (not named after canada the country rather the canada the person who discovered the bird). would have loved to see a grizzly or a black bear but had no such luck.
the whole four days were filled with activities through the day, beer through the evening till wee late times and dealing with a blocked nose all the time (the most irritating part of the trip was falling sick one day before the trip)
did a lot of hiking (hiked in rain for the first time in america). did white water rafting for the first time (am hooked for life). we did two level 3s and got slammed around by the water a lot. was being very the macho not taking the splash jacket and paid the price by shivering for almost two hours after the rafting. went horse back riding in some long trail in flagg ranch inside grand teton.
had abso amazing time want to do a multi-day white water rafting trip next.
more on trip in next blog
posted by ganpatibapa @ 11:15 PM
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