After consuming some waffles (my mum brought up for me), we set off. In fact today there's quite a bit of driving. Not much scenery. In fact as we drove to Gardiner, we saw acres and more acres of flat yellow plain fields. most of the time, we were guessing how do they look like in summer....are they used for planting crops? hahaha.... some guess we had were planting of crops, for horses and cows to graze. we were somehow right. today we did not stop that much to take photos... coz the scenery were not as fantastic as yesterday..... hahaha...
American Flag waving in the blue skies
Chains of mountains
A man fly fishing in the river
so pretty soon we reached Gardiner (this is situated at the north portion of Yellowstone National Park). But we reached around 2pm. then we chose the motel that we wanted to stay for that night. We chose to stay in Absaroka Lodge. I must say that its a very nice motel. Coz we've got a small balcony that over looks a fast flowing stream and u get to see some fabulous scenery. The price was pretty reasonable. After putting down our bags, we changed into something comfortable. As we'll be going to the 'Boiling Pool' in Yellowstone National Park.
Historical entrance gate to Yellowstone National Park
mum with the board 'Entering Wyoming' (most of Yellowstone National Park is in Wyoming state)
Entering Montana
U must be wondering what the 'Boiling Pool'. as the name applies, it a thermal pool but its a natural pool. Yeah its the westernised version of an onsen. However, this 'Boiling pool' is rather interesting as it has a mixture of the thermal water with the cold spring water. Hence, when u're inside the waters, at times u feel super hot water and at times u feel super cold water. hahaha.. its pretty interesting. And apparently this thermal pool is only known by the locals. Hence u don't see asians there. hahaha... in fact my family and I were the only asians in that thermal pool.After immersing in the thermal pool for about 45min, we decided to head to the car to change. We were pretty daring (in fact the locals also did that. They will line towels in the car and changed in the car), we wrapped a towel over ourselves and changed into dry warmer clothes in the carpark.
After we've changed, we headed to the visitor center in Yellowstone National Park. And we got our 1st glimpse of the elk. In fact, there are lots of elks roaming in the national park. we happen to see the male elk and snapped quite a number of pictures. not just us, but almost everyone who was there (minus the rangers) were snapping pictures away. After that, we drove further on and reached Mammoth hotsprings.
Male elk
Wow! and i thought the terraces i saw in Pamakkule in Turkey was awesome.... i must say that the hotspring terraces in Mammoth Hotsprings are even more awesome! there are just so many that u can see until u've enough of them. As you follow the pathway to view the hotsprings, sets of terraces just emerged in front of you. some are still sprouting hotsprings, others are dried up. But they still looked pretty.
hot springs
us posing in front of the hotsprings
1 of the 'dead' hotsprings
1 of the 'alive' hotsprings
as you further down, u get to see some really fantastic thermal pools. Some are really colourful whilst some are completely dried up. Seeing the scenery in the setting sun was really awesome. It was a few days later i got to know that Mammoth Hotsprings had some of the most acidic thermal pools in Yellowstone National Park. In fact there were some pools, whose acidity was about pH 1-2! scary!!!
Colourful pools
terraces with different colours
1 dead tree in the dead terraces
relections of the skies on the waters
family photo in front of the hotsprings
hotsprings 'waterfall'
Calcium carbonate patters (seems like feather-like)
As we were walking and talking, 1 lady told us that the hotspring had dried up. And i asked her if she had seen it when it was still flowing with water. And she told me that when she 1st saw it, that was in 1967, it was still sprouting water, and the information plate stated that in 1987, there was still water. However, from then till now, the hotspring had dried up. and the hotspring had sort of shifted to another place. And had a nice conversation with her. She told me that was was on vacation with her husband for 4 1/2 wks. Her husband was fascinated with the elks, hence had stayed in the hotel to look at the elks, whilst she had wandered to hotsprings to take in more scenery. They drove all the way from New York and had visited the Yosimete National Park, Glacier National Park (there were there on the same days as us) and they happen to see a mama bear and baby bear in 'Many Glacier'. they also visited the Indian National Park in New Mexico and she told me they had a hard time getting to the National Park as the roads were of super terrible condition and u definitely need a 4-wheeler in order to get there.
Setting sun lighting up the yellow fields & mountains
me & the american lady
Later when we reached the carpark, we departed ways and wished each other to enjoy the rest of our vacation.For us, we headed to the grocery stall to get some supplies then we head back to the motel to have our dinner and check out the available motels in the next town that we'll be staying tomorrow. And that night had tried some American beer. think its the Budwiser that had lime flavour. it was really light. but tasted ok. Tomorrow we'll head to West Yellowstone and there's loads and loads to see. =D
scenery taken from the balcony @ dusk
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