Yellowstone Adventure Part 3

Tuesday we wanted to go to the northwest part of the park, called Mammoth Hot Springs (MHS). This was problematic because the road from Norris Junction to MHS was under construction and therefore impassable. I think they save all the road construction till after school starts to avoid the massive amounts of people that come during summer vacation and just try to squeeze it in before winter, as winters here are hard and long. We saw pictures in the local museum of trains equipped with special rotary snow plows that were plowing through train high snow! But one of the other main roads were also shut down so it made getting around really slow and repetitive. A lot of it was through heavily timbered area, so it wasn't even that interesting. Just miles and miles of trees, trees, and more trees. Occasionally, one of the kids would pipe up in the back: "Wait! Slow down, I think I saw a tree!"
But after the hour and a half extra detour time we made it, but man, was it worth it!

This place is just so mind bogling: you just keep coming across park features that you couldn't have imagined and if you did, you would instantly dismiss it as stupid. So much of this park looks like bad movie props from the original Star Trek show or even Lost In Space. You see things that are incredible, as in it defies credibility. And it just keeps coming; I cannot exaggerate. Maybe since I stumbled into this without any presuppositions, it is more amazing to me, but I just had no idea.  I would say that it truly seems other worldly, except it is all centered around one thing that no other worlds that we know of have: water in its liquid form. The geysers, the prismatic pools, the steaming pools, the bubbling paint pots, just the steaming mists coming out of the ground right next to the roads, are all the result of underground liquid water sitting right on top of a volcano.   But, I digress.

So we went to MHS, we did the normal family stuff; I did my normal daddy stuff. You know, largely embarrassing my teen/tween girls. Like putting my arm around Oldest Girl and singing show tunes badly and loudly while on the boardwalk amongst crowds of people. Or when in the midst of sulfuric aromas emitting from the prismatic pools and strangers loudly protesting Youngest Girl passing such horrible gas and begging her to lay off the beans for breakfast. My boys are either too young to be embarrassed by crazy old dad, or they just think that stuff is cool, but they seem impervious to my schick.

Here are some photos which I'm quite certain that do this park no justice at all.

These white things are called "paint pots" because the consistency looks like paint boiling as air comes up through it. It is really mineral rich water as it evaporates.

An awesome rock structure that loomed out over the road. 

Incredible rock formations. 

This is Mammoth Hot Springs. 

This is a petrified redwood tree that the sign said was indistinguishable from the California redwoods. There used to be three of them, but tourists took chunks of them home until the built a fence around the last one.

This is called the "Mammoth Hot Springs Terrace"

Strange pools. 

This is called SheepEater cliff. If you look closely, you can tell these rocks are formed in neatly shaped columns. Some have fallen over into the rock pile in front and are still in neat (horizontal) formation. The kids loved to climb on them. 

Oldest Boy found a bat squeezed in a tiny crack !

My kiddos. 

The backside of MHS.

My Smokin' Hot Mountain Goat Mama.