Yellowstone National Park

Continued on to Yellowstone after Grand Teton.  Given the park is over 3,000 sq. miles and extends into three states, I only traveled through a small portion of it.  While I was surprised to find much of the park a little underwhelming (beautiful, untouched land sure, but nothing overly unique from what I saw back home), it was hard not to be impressed when I finally reached the Geyser Basin.

Snake River winding down towards Grand Teton in the distance

Yellowstone was the first national park in the world, and sits on the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest super-volcano in North America.  It is considered active and, based on previous cases, is actually past-due to erupt again.

Firehole Lake Drive

To give a sense of scale, Mount St. Helens left a crater of approximately 2 square miles when it last erupted.  Yellowstone Caldera is 1500 square miles.  When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, its ash was detectable over 20,000 square miles away.  The last eruption of Yellowstone (considered a smaller eruption), ejected 8,000 times the ash and lava of St. Helens.

Old Faithful Geyser erupting

Great Fountain Geyser

Firehole Lake Drive