 |
| Coyotes are very prevalent in
Yellowstone park. This fellow is probably looking for scraps left by
visitors. Guess he didn't get the word that summer visitation is
over. |
 |
| Snow in the Mammoth Hot Springs
area of Yellowstone. |
 |
| The "terraces" at
Mammoth Hot Springs are very strange. What forms them? Several
key ingredients combine to make the terraces: heat, water, limestone, and
a rock fracture system through which hot water can reach the earth's
surface. |
 |
| According to the national park
service, here, a rarer kind of spring
is born when the hot water ascends through the ancient limestone deposits
of the area instead of the silica-rich lava flows of the hot springs
common elsewhere in the park. The results are strikingly different and
unique. They invoke a landscape that resembles a cave turned inside out,
with its delicate features exposed for all to see. The flowing waters
spill across the surface to sculpt magnificent travertine limestone
terraces. As one early visitor described them, "No human architect
ever designed such intricate fountains as these. The water trickles over
the edges from one to another, blending them together with the effect of a
frozen waterfall." |
 |
| Seeing the terraces with snow on
them was truly spectacular. |
 |
| It's said that algae living in
the warm pools have tinted the travertine shades of brown, orange, red,
and green. |
 |
| I believe this is the Minerva
Terrace ????? |
