Yellowstone National Park, WY, 9/13

This is not one of Yellowstone's famous geysers, hot springs or fumaroles; just an amazing man who cycled all the way from Canada.

Mammoth Springs

These hot springs are a result of rain and snow water filtering down through rock and dissolving minerals such as calcium on the way.  When water reaches hot rock above the magma chamber not far below the crust, it is superheated, and boils back to the surface where it deposits calcium and other minerals as it cools.

 

 

After the devastating Yellowstone forest fire of 1988, seeds that had lain dormant in the ground sprouted in the ash, resulting in new-growth forest. 

The Yellowstone River at the fishing bridge where Cutthroat trout spawn in the spring.  People used to stand elbow to elbow on the bridge as they yanked trout from the river, until the Park outlawed it because the fish population was almost decimated.