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May 10th, 2005: Red Desert

Red Desert plains are covered with silver-green sage shrub and dotted with small lakes. A snow storm looms over the plains as we drive through them. Not a standard desert ambiance, I would say.



The wild mustangs look undisturbed.





Here lives one of the largest wild horse herds in the world, some six thousand horses. The mustangs love it so that their population grows by 20 percent a year. The Bureau of Land Management thinks this is just too much for the desert to support them naturally. Therfore, every year between mid-July and mid-November, the horses are rounded up and a portion is expatriated to various other parts of the US. A serious rodeo as you can imagine (:))

Over fifty thousand antelopes also call this region home. We see hundreds of them grazing, looking around, breaking into an elegant speed, and watching us from safe distance again.

May 11th, 2005: Grand Tetons

We spend a quiet evening watching wild swans and noiseless deer feeding by the extended lodgpole pine forests.



A chilly morning opens a nice view of the three highest peaks of the region that a French called Grand Tetons.



We drive on to even wilder places.

May 12th, 2005: Yellowstone

The largest active geyser field in the world. A mud volcano in the center of a caldera. Thousands of colorful hot springs. Boiling rivers. North America's largest mountain lake. Hundreds of waterfalls. Vegetation types from near-desert to subalpine meadows and forests. The largest concentration of large and small mammals in the lower 48 states of the USA. Welcome to Yellowstone.

Yellowstone sits on a hot spot, or a magma chamber that receives hot magma straight from the Earth's liquid interior. Every 600 thousand years or so, huge volcanic eruptions occured here over the last 2 million years. The latest one, 640 thousand years ago, spewed out nearly 240 cubic miles of debris. Today's Yellowstone central part is basically a huge ancient volcano crater, a 50 by 60 kilometers caldera.

While the hot spot is stationnary, the tectonic plates move slowly over it. The oldest volcanos that had delivered magma from the Yellowstone magma chamber have in the meantime moved to Nevada. The magmatic heat powering past eruptions still powers the park's geysers, hot springs, and fumaroles. Small earthquakes happen daily. It is difficult to predict what exactly happens next, but this is the right place to experience the manifestations of Earth's energy.

Yellowstone is home to 60 percent of the world's geysers. About 300 geysers erupt here every year. Some erupt faithfully, others are unpredictable.



The Old Faithful has erupted more than a million times since Yellowstone became the world's first national park in 1872. It has been seen to shoot hot water to as high as 60 meters into the air, from a depth of some three kilometers underground where it has been heated by the magma body. Some 30 thousand liters of water were dispatched in the biggest eruption.

We walk in the Midway and the Lower Geyser Bassins. The blue pools steam. A bubbling brook meets a cold river and warms it up. A scarlet acid soup cooks in the so called paint pots.









In the northern part of the park, the Mammoth Spring area, hot gases are stored underneath the surface. Water seeps down into the ground and meets with these gases. Some of the gases are readily dissolved in the hot water to form an acid solution. This solution attacks limestone as it works up through the rock to the surface. Once exposed to the air, some of the carbon dioxide escapes from the solution and travertine is deposited. Mammoth Hot Springs deposits about two tons of travertine limestone per day!

Certain types of bacteria like acid hot environment. Their colonies are responsible for the colors of the travertine terraces and pools.







Often, trees get caught in the hot streams. They would survive increased temperatures and moisture, but the minerals eventually jam their veins, stopping vital circulation. This leaves the the trees literally "stone dead".





From time to time, acid water flows change their path, and waterfalls dry up. Their habitat destroyed, bacteria disappear, exposing the natural color of the travertine terraces.





The landscape in Mammoth Springs changes on a continuous basis. New pools appear, old terraces erode. New cracks form in front of our eyes, liberating the gases trapped inside.



We visit another fascinating area of the park, the Mud Volcano region. It strongly reminds of a chemical laboratory, a New York city sewage treatment plant, another planet, or an outright hell.

We see fumes and jets of vapor coming out of holes and caves; poison-green streams running down a lifeless hillside, a laid-down forest.



We hear the gurgling of countless mud pots, the hissing of explosive gases exiting the Earth like if it was a punctured gas pipeline; the rumblings of the Mud Volcano.





The eyes burn from gas attacks. It smells really bad.

But these are not scenes of a major ecological catastrophy nor a well-done imitation of prehistoric ages. These are actual, intensely natural geothermic processes, reminders of a powerful past and a dynamic future of our planet.

The Mud Volcano area was covered by a dense forest until 1978, but already a century before it was possible to tell that something was in the cooking. In the late 1800s, the Mud Volcano exploded every few hours, spewing mud 17 meters into the treetops. Half a century later, a swarm of powerful earthquakes shook the area. Soil temperatures skyrocketed, to some 94 degrees Celsius, baking many of the trees that surrounded the volcano. At the beginning of the 21st century, violent steam vents hissed forth through sudden openings in the baked hill, large craters gaping open large enough to swallow the dead logs that fell in. The area has been relatively calm since, although we can tell it is not asleep.

For now, the Mud Volcano is a pool of bubbling mud, but small changes are constantly under way.



Billions of bacteria that have been around before the oxygen came to be, and long before the human race was born, live in the bubbling mud. Apart from enjoying the muddy whirlpool, the thermophiles eat sulfur and produce sulfuric acid that breaks down rock and soil into more mud. A part of the sulfuric acid evaporates and becomes hydrogen sulfide gas, creating the explosive rotten-egg smell for everyone's benefit. I guess it would take just a group of smokers to create another crater (;) Whatever happens next, we can be sure that the place will look different when we visit next time..

Yellowstone is also a fantastic place to observe wildlife in an exceptional setting. In the West Thumb region of the park, elks enjoy hot pools brightly colored by bacteria.





The Yellowstone Lake is still frozen, but hot springs melted the ice close to the shore for the pleasure of the ducks.



Further up, hundreds of buffalos graze by fumaroles.



At the turn of the century, America's wild buffalo, or bison, which at one time numbered 60 million, had dwindled to about two dozen animals. These last few animals took refuge in Yellowstone, where they were able to multiply healthily. There are some 3500 in the park today.



A bighorn sheep wears a melancolic look today.



The proghorn bull looks well after its ladies.



Midway between Madison and West Entrance, a bald eagle looks at us from a pine branch. Near the North Entrance, we see a wild goat family passing by.



We take a hike in the beautiful Lamar Valley that is supposedly full of wolves. Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone ten years ago. The population grew steadily since to a total of 230 gray wolves by the end of last year. Still, a ranger told us, less then 5 per cent of park visitors get to actually see one.

We meet a group of people with huge binoculars observing a pack of wolves with puppies. We peek through the binoculars but all we can see are gray dots. We go on and spot a moose walking fast down to the river. We hope to meet it there. We follow fresh moose prints along the slow green Slough River.



As we walk upstream, the river accelerates to white water and the vegetation becomes more dense. I stop to adjust my camera in case we catch up with the moose. Suddenly, I hear Mathias saying: "A bear!!!". At that moment, the grizzly makes a huge jump, his square meters of beautiful fur disappearing behind the trees. Now he stares at us from some 30 meters distance, considering. We see details of his wild face. Slowly, we back off, singing all the songs that we can remember.

That is not the end of the story. We see elks crossing the river. Spring flowers are just coming out.



A yellow-bellied marmot tries to impress us.



Then an old bad tempered buffalo has the feeling we are passing too close to him and scrambles to his feet. Buffalo can weight 2000 pounds and charge unpredictably.



We walk a big circle around him when we spot a coyote sneaking near another buffalo.





The coyote backs off the buffalo and heads towards us, wind in his back. He disappears behind a rock and when he comes out, surprise, surprise, he sees humans..



We may have missed wolves today but had nevertheless a thrilling wildlife experience.

Yellowstone is home to some 300 grizzly bears and many more black bears. In the neighborhood of Tower Falls, we meet a black bear of cinnamon color and a smaller black bear of dark hair.













The best part of the day in Yellowstone is probably the evening. Most of the visitors have left already or are cooking a dinner in the designated areas. That is when the rest of the park is so peaceful.







That is also when some animals wake up to look for their meal. In the last light of our last day, we get to see a remarkable, seemingly effortless run by a gray wolf. He is so fast.

May 19th, 2005: Craters of the Moon

We drive through Idaho and note that the ground is covered with relatively young lava rocks. The rocks have not eroded yet enough to support grass and big mammals. The region is inhabited by birds and rodents that can live on shrub, insects, and sharp rock.



We stop at the Craters of the Moon National Monument. What on Earth has happened here? We look over a silent landscape of desolate rock and black cinder. 75 square miles of lava plains, craters, cinder cones, basaltic monoliths, and lava bombs spread in front of us. This is as close to a moon landsape as it gets.









The eruptions here ceased only two thousand years ago. More recently, pioneer plants have popped up. Sturdy plants such as monkey flower, antelope bitterbush, desert buckwheat, or certain types of pines have to deal with great weather adversity as well as acid soil.





On a summer day, the ground temperatures can reach over 65 degrees Celsius. Winter brings snow and strong freezing winds. Only scant rain falls. Geologists predict the landscape will sometime erupt again, probably before biodiversity had a chance to develop.

May 21st, 2005: Jordan Valley

Something is going on in the Jordan Valley, Oregon. As we drive by, we see a respectable crowd gathering. People wear their best traditionnal Western costumes. Girls and boys, and babies, we see virtually no one without a proper hut. And there are a lot of horses.

An older farmer with a beaver hut Washington style tells us the most authentic rodeo in the whole country is taking place. Every year since 1962, people from Texas, Washington, Idaho, and other places travel here to see the show. Professional cowboys from big ranges come here to compete for famous saddles. We have never seen a rodeo in our life??!! Then we just must see the Big Loop.

After a few patriotic songs, and there are good patriots here, the action starts with saddle bronc riding. The horses get a hairy belt around their belly exactly where it tickles most. The riders have to stay for ten seconds in the saddle while tickling the horse additionally with their legs. They may never touch the horse with a hand. They must keep one hand above their head, and add something stylish such as throwing the hat in the air and having it back. Not as easy as it sounds.







The horses find it difficult to calm down even after they kicked the rider off and do not easily leave the scene..



The second discipline is the calf roping. Cowboys at the farms usually perform this task when it is time to stamp and innoculate newborn free-running calves. First, the cowboy on a horse has to throw a loop around the running calf's neck. Then, he has to jump down from the horse, run to the animal, turn it on its back, and tie its feet with a rope.



It took the best cowboy nine seconds to "take the calf home".

Next we see the junior steer riding. This show is in fact for a really hard stomach. The tough cowboy kids often fly in the air like dolls.





Then comes the big loop, a discipline that gave the name to the Jordan Valley competition. Big Loop is one of few rodeos where this task is still performed. It involves two riders looping a wild mustang. Ideally, the mustang gets one big loop around the neck and another one around two legs. There is a penalty if only one leg gets tied. There is a time limit of two minutes for bringing the mustang down.

It is a daunting task because the small skinny wild mustangs are just so much faster than a tamed well nourished horse. It takes a really good eye and perfect technique to throw the loop at the right moment in the right way so its close around the galloping mustang. It also requires a strong hand as the first thrower has to hold the wild animal that continues running before the legs get tied.









At one point, something hillarious happens. As the riders dash after the mustang, the wild horse, instead of turning the corner, jumps over a two meters high fence and disappears in the desert. The riders left without the horse to catch get a second chance and finish second.

Follows the bareback riding, similar to saddle bronc riding, except there is no saddle to sit in! The horses are well trained to kick and rock-and-roll..





Next it is time for the very juniors. As soon as they can sit, little girls learn to lead a horse around the barrels.





By now, most spectators can not live a second longer without a hamburger, a beer, or a pepsi.



The competition goes on with cow riding, quite a lot of fun.



Finaly comes the last bit of real suspense. The bull riding.







The bull jumps may look less explosive than those of a horse, but a really dangerous situation is when the bull gets over a man.





Fortunately, we have just two knock-outs and in both cases, the riders get back to their feet.

Thrilling experience. It was worth it.