Yellowstone!

So we’ve been to Yellowstone Park, the oldest National Park in the US. It is a huge area – it has te size of Upper Austria and is basically the “leftover” of a huge volcanic eruption 600.000 years ago. Since lava flows and glaciers have shaped the region and today you can’t even recognize a “volcanic” shape anymore – never the less is this volcano thought to be still active and an eruption would have massive consequences on the world climate. It is estimated that the eruption could kill people from 6! surrounding states and will emit a massive amount of air pollution, ashes, etc… But until it erupts, it is a great place to visit! There are hot springs, mud volcanoes, geysers and steam holes to be fascinated y and of course there is an abundance of wildlife around! In the park you can see bisons, elk, moose, wolves, grizzlies and other wild animals. fortunately we did not encounter a grizzly bear, but we did see some other cool creatures.

The bisons were just grazing along the road and could easily be photographed out of the car – that’s the way we like it! 🙂

The elks really didn’t care much for humans, although they are supposed to be really dangerous in this time of year – mating season. They can randomly attack humans in this time, so we kept our distance and stayed in the car. ( I know that this pic looks like the elk is behind a fence – but actually this elk is in front of the fence… and it is a bit blurry because well we took pictures from the car…)

There is amazing landscape to hike into all around (not that we ‘d hike there, did you read the part about the grizzlies above??).

but that didn’t stop us from looking like great austrian hikers 😉

and of course so much volcanic activity to adore:

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We actually did a ranger tour – they offer ranger programs throughout the park which are free and where the rangers tell you cool stuff about the volcano/animals. We took a tour through the Norris geyser basin which was great.

The last picture is of the old faithful, the most popular geyser in Yellow Stone Park. It erupts every 1-2 hours and the rangers can predict it +/- 10 minutes!

we’ve spent two days in Yellowstone park and actually I have to say that it was sufficient time for us – we spent one day checking out the volcanic activity and one day looking for wildlife. Our accommodation – although it was over 100$ per night, didn’t have sufficient heating, resulting in a night we spend huddled next to each other under 3 blankets to keep us warm (the night before it had snowed and gotten so cold the water pipe to our cabin burst – hence we also didn’t have running water…

…so we were actually looking forward to our stay in a motel in Idaho falls the next day… Still we enjoyed our stay in that amazing national park! The scenery was just breathtaking and the animals exciting to see so close.