Toulouse and Tarn 3

Tags

Earthquake, evolution, Muséum de Toulouse, plate tectonics, seismograph, Toulouse, Toulouse Museum

Muséum de Toulouse. (I can only speculate as to why they don’t they use the French word musée.) I had no idea what kind of museum this was going to be; it was just a means of staying dry as far as I was concerned. But I was delighted to find that it was of geology and natural history, and of the interaction of the two, which was perfectly to my taste.  There was a sort of pre-entrance with an exhibition about the chemical elements which I found bizarre, possibly trendy, and I hoped that this was not a bad omen.  It was not:  I found rest of the museum excellent.

It was fun to see, at the real entrance, three cartoon  of animals, all of which I had seen in the wild in very recent years:  brown/grizzly bear, wolf, and lynx.  The first exhibits were of mineral specimens.  Eat your heart out, crystal shops of Glastonbury – my reflection gives an idea of the size of these. The rest were of a more reasonable size.  (I took many, many photos throughout the museum, and could have taken many more.  In this post are just a small selection of those I did take.)

Next it was earthquakes. These little models indicate the destruction occurring in earthquakes on various  degrees of the Richter scale. You could stand on a metal plate which shook you as you watched a video, presumably taken on a web-cam, of the effects on an earthquake in a real home.  The gentleman reading his paper at the outset left the house after a longer period than I would have put up with. Perhaps he was accustomed to minor earthquakes, and thought there was nothing to worry about.  His exit when it did come was very hasty!

This is a beautiful old Chinese (or was it Japanese?) seismograph.  Each of the dragons has a ball in its mouth.  The first one to fall into a frog’s mouth during an earthquake indicates its direction.

Then came plate tectonics.  I could sit and watch the dance of the plates over the last 600 million years for ever.  I find it infinitely fascinating. And this video takes the dance forward, to show how the Mediterranean will close up in due course.

Living creatures next, classification and characteristics.  I loved these skeletons.

A bear attacking a deer I think

A huge area was given over to the exhibition of creatures by their classes, and explanations.  There was a risk that this could have been a rather old-fashioned display, rows of animals pinned up behind windows, but it was so well presented that it worked.  I confess that I failed to notice the blue lines indicating relationships in this exhibit, until I saw the photo.

Marsupials

When I got to the apes, I said to myself, tongue in cheek, ‘Wot, no human?’.  But there were several images on the screen at the end of the window, this one comparing homo sapiens with a gorilla. Upstairs, the next room linked together the geology of the inanimate with the evolution of the animate, geological period by geological period, with illustrations of how the tectonic plates were located at any particular time.  I was beginning to flag by now, especially as I had not yet had any lunch, so did not give this the time I would have liked. Here are just a few of the maps of how the earth’s plates were at the given time, and even fewer of the fossil exhibits. The museum would need several visits to do it justice.

 

I don’t have a great interest in fossils, though I do appreciate their ability to date a given rock, but I loved this petrified slice of tree trunk. I just whizzed through the last room, illustrating how living creatures function. If ever I have to spend another wet day in Toulouse, I know where I shall head!

Toulouse and Tarn 2

Tags

Canal du Midi, Franco-Prussian War, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, St-Exupery, Toulouse

Toulouse, Saturday. It had clearly rained overnight and was just starting to clear as I left L’Ours Blanc after breakfast.  A major daily market (Le marché Victor Hugo) was just opposite, so after a quick look around that, I set off on another walk, which was planned to include some considerable time indoors.  In fact the weather was not as appalling as had been forecast, and for most of my tour today I did not open my umbrella.  I made my way down to the Cathédrale St-Etienne, which curiously was made up of two very different and offset parts, as can be seen from this plan,

The small print includes the word ‘romane’. This is not Roman, but romanesque, a trap for many tourism translators.

from this backwards look,

 

(forwards look from the same spot)

and this sideways view, taken from as far away as I could get.  I have to say, I was not particularly thrilled by this building, but perhaps the weather, which was not only damp but cold, was affecting my mood.

My planned walk took me past via the Monuments aux Morts, where there was a ceremony going on.

Apartments lining a long green walk

At the other end, a monument to those who died in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war

A series of adjacent public parks was my next goal, and I was amused to discover that the Grand Rond was also known as the Boulingrin – from ‘bowling green’! (Though I saw no-where for that game, or boules for that matter, to be played.) 

Now why did I suddenly think of the UK Parliament when I saw this duck-house?!

Antoine St-Exupéry

In due course I arrived at the Jardin des Plantes, where the grey sky did not enhance the vegetation, of which I took few photos.

A recent monument to those in the Midi-Pyrénées region who saved the lived of Jews during WWII

I could find nothing about this, but imagine the gateway itself dates from classical Roman times.

But I was delighted to find that around this waterfall was not just one family of ducks and recently hatched ducklings, but another with rather older ones.  There was other wildlife in the park.

Red squirrel, common in France as grey ones have not yet spread much from the SE of the country to oust them

Terrapin

A proud cockerel, in fact leading his harem

After this I spent a long while in the Muséum de Toulouse, a really excellent earth sciences collection, the entire subject of the next post.  From here I made my way to the Canal du Midi, which runs at this point roughly parallel and about a mile from the Garonne. I hoped for lovely views, as I had experienced elsewhere on that canal some years previously.  But no, there was a main road running beside it on both sides, and again the grey skies made it look even less interesting. And it was starting to rain, and it was cold. Looking backwards, shortly before I left the canalside, I was able to confirm that the water, as I had sensed, had indeed for a short while been above the level of my head.  My walk took me past this commemorative statue, and to a bookshop to find a map for the second part of my trip.

 

As I left the FNAC (which chain I had been told 30 years previously was ‘a very good bookshop’, but which is now much more concerned with multimedia) it was pouring once more and I was only too pleased to get back to my hotel, via Le Capitole where I bought a ticket for an evening concert, and an organic food store where I picked up a snack for my evening meal.

You would think that since: I had bought my concert ticket at Le Capitole; which had an auditorium (well, I learned later that it was more an opera house); the orchestra giving the concert was called the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse; and there being nothing on the handbill or ticket to say where the concert was – that it would be at Le Capitole itself.  So when I turned up a in very good time for the start of the concert and found not a single door opened in either Le Capitole or the Hotel de Ville, after two complete tours around both, I was completely mystified.

I found one light on behind one door, the stage door.  So I was pleased to find that this would open, and that a concierge was there, so I was able to ask how I could get in to the concert.  He told me there was no performance that evening, to which I replied that I had bought a ticket for one that very afternoon.  Ah, I wanted the Halle aux Grains, he told me.  Where was that I asked.  (Le Capitole being so close to my hotel, I had left my map in my room.)  Did I know the Metro?  No, I hadn’t used it (and didn’t fancy having to faff around now discovering how it worked.)

Anyway, thanks to him and a couple of other good citizens of Toulouse, I arrived on foot at the Halle aux Grains (via the afore-mentioned Monuments aux Morts) just in time not to get in for Schumann’s Manfred Overture. When I was let in afterwards to a convenient seat marginally better than the one I had bought (its proper tenant had not turned up), I enjoyed an excellent Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (called Héroique in French).

Photo snuck during applause, French horns taking their bow

This really was a first-class concert and I was glad to have made the effort, the enjoyment added to by a good chat with the geography professor mentioned in my previous post.  She told me that this hexagonal building, the home of this orchestra for the last 40 years, had, after it stopped serving as a cereals market, been among other things a boxing venue!

 

It was absolutely tipping it down when I emerged after the concert, and I decided that the time had come to find out how to use the metro (i.e. how to buy a ticket for and follow that metro plan – with only two lines the latter was not a problem).  I was very pleased that I did not have to walk back the half hour, two stops, to my hotel in that downpour.

USA 2018 (15), Horses, waterfowl, and people

Tags

Balboa Park, dressage, Griffith Park, Hilda Gurney, horses, Keenridge, Lake Balboa, Los Angeles, Marmalade restaurant, pepper tree, Thousand Oaks, waterfowl

USA 2018 (15), Horses, waterfowl, and people.  From Bozeman, I flew via Denver to Burbank, Los Angeles. And true to form, the second of these flights was about an hour late arriving. I’m not sure we were ever given a reason this time, but it meant my niece,  Karina, had to hang around for me.  There wasn’t much of the day left, and there are no photos of that day.

Karina was having car worries, but she had worked out a plan to minimise disruption the following day, Friday 23rd February, which she had kindly taken off work. In any case, as I told her, I wasn’t there to do stuff, but just to be with her in her normal life – though, as she replied, sitting around in a car dealer’s was hardly typical!  However, that was not for long.  Having deposited the car, she took me off (thanks to a courtesy shuttle) for brunch at ‘Marmalade’ in Thousand Oaks. She had warned me late in January that they had been experiencing temperatures in the eighties Fahrenheit (upwards of 26ºC) in her part of Los Angeles county. This had not lasted though, and my t-shirts were unnecessary.  While it was sunny, there was a definite chill in the air, and locals found it cold.

Karina practices dressage to what seems to me (a total non-expert) a very high amateur level. We visited the Keenridge stables, where she has a few lessons from a former Olympian, Hilda Gurney (bronze medal US team dressage 1976). The aura of this woman was palpable.

Pepper tree

From here we went to spend time (and Karina effort) with her own horse, Klassie, at the equestrian centre where he is stabled.

I saw quite a lot of the devastation caused by the recent wildfires and mudslides in southern California.  I didn’t think it decent to take photos, but I seem inadvertently to have captured here some of the damage caused by wildfires which had happened very near Karina’s stables – causing evacuation – a few months prior to the ones which made the headlines in, mainly, Ventura and Santa Barbara.

Karina is not short – Klassie is tall!

Towards the end of the day, because Karina knows I like walking, we were joined by a friend of hers, Sara, who took us into and up Griffith Park, Los Angeles.

Looking back

Karina and Sara graciously agreed to my taking this photo of them against the background of downtown LA

On the way back down

The following day, Sunday, Karina had another car problem, but this could be sorted at a tire/tyre place within walking distance of her home, after she had paid an early visit to her own stables for a lesson there.

Meanwhile, the lovely Patches looked after me.

Looking at the time available for the rest of the day, before an evening meet-up, we decided to visit a local park, which Karina had never got around to seeing herself.  I was pleased to give her a reason to do so. It looked as if it might take us no time at all to walk around the lake, but Karina did not know just how long I can linger when looking at wildlife!  (This time I had no wildlife expert or bird book to identify the birds we were seeing, so I have been hesitant in my labelling.  One problem is that there can be American versions of Eurasian birds which look almost identical, c.f. ravens and magpies. Corrections and additions would be gratefully received.)

Like the Eurasian grey heron

These three caused much amusement. Is the second goose (gander) in courtship mode, with his tail feathers up? Is the little white bird a chaperone? In love with the first goose?

The threesome stayed together for all the time we were aware of them

Even when the geese eyed up the ?American bittern,

the little white bird was close by

“Do not feed the ducks”

OK, coots are not ducks but…

Grackle, I think

I couldn’t see what these birds were, about the size of starlings, but they were making a heck of a racket as we walked by the tree

I’d love to know what the ducks on the right with the green streak are

Cormorants/anhingas/shag?

I’m pretty sure these are Egyptian Geese

A further visit to Klassie ended the afternoon, and I was delighted to see this coyote hanging around, on a hillside just outside the premises, as the sun began to set. The evening was spent very pleasurably at the restaurant of an Irish pub, (I had fish and chips!) with three of Karina’s horsey friends.  The talk was very little of horses and much of my Yellowstone trip, which I was delighted to recount.

 

I thought the photo of the coyote at the stables might be the last picture in this whole USA 2018 series – but I was to be mistaken.  The flight home was very visually exciting.

USA 2018 (14) Wolves!

Tags

American dipper, American magpie, American raven, Bald eagle, Bison, bison fur, Bozeman, coyote, Gardiner, geological dyke, Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, ice jam, Liberty Cap Mammoth, Mammoth Hot Springs, moose, Pronghorn, Roosevelt Arch, Tinker's Hill, Tinker's Hill Cemetery, travertine terrace, Wapiti Lake wolf pack, wolf, wolf reintroduction, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park, |National Museum of Wildlife Art

USA 2018 (14), Wolves!  Yes, on this last day of our Yellowstone ‘safari’, we did see wolves.  It was slightly less cold (about minus 23ºC/minus 9ºF) as we left Cooke City on Wednesday 22nd February, making an even earlier start, at 6.30 a.m.

The last wolf pack in Yellowstone Park was killed in the 1920s.  On 12th January 1995 the first wolves for decades were released here, and, by the end of 1996, 31 of them had been relocated from Canada to the park.  They and their descendants have changed the ecosystem, with an enormously beneficial effect on fauna and flora, there now being a top predator where there was none for decades, rebalancing nature.  Here is a 4’34” video on how. (Another, on a wild wolf playing with domestic dogs, shows just how huge the wolf is.) [Three weeks later. There’s a snippet in March’s ‘BBC Wildlife Magazine about this phenomenon. ‘Predators don’t just eat prey animals, they scare the hell out of them, and this fear factor alone is enough to shape ecosystems. After wolves disappeared from Yellowstone National Park, elk were free to forage wherever their tastebuds led them, including into lush but risky riverbank habitats. This led to the devastation of specialist riparian vegetation. When wolves were reintroduced, the elk looked elsewhere and the riverbanks recovered.’]

Once more heading for Mammoth Hot Springs, our first stop was to watch a moose eating its favourite food, willow – recovered thanks to the wolves perhaps. I got interested in an American dipper (nothing like European ones) by a river and I walked back a few yards to take a closer look.  Imagine my astonishment on turning round after a few minutes, at seeing this! Of course any coyote likes an easy surface to walk on, and this one walked right on by me, and through my companions by the vehicles. We next stopped to observe a young bison’s carcase being recycled, about half a mile from where we were on the road.

All very symmetrical: American ravens to the left, a coyote on either side of the carcase, and American magpies to the right

By midday we had reached and gone through Mammoth, turning north to Tinker’s Hill, Gardiner, and the North Entrance to the NP.  This is the Roosevelt Arch, (1903).

On the other, entrance, side of the Arch, there is engraved, ‘For the benefit and enjoyment of the people’.

We were now technically out of the Park, but still well within the wider ecosystem of Yellowstone. I wandered around a little, while telescopes were being set up.

There are worse locations for a cemetery.

Tim encouraged me to feel this bison fur he had found an a fence.  It was so soft!

Whimsical landscape on Sprinter window

And I joined the others, patiently seeking a wolf pack known to hang out around here.

 

YES! Not with the naked eye, but with binoculars, cameras and ‘scopes. The Wapiti Lake pack I believe, itself inside the Park boundary.  About two miles away. (Just very occasionally – very occasionally – I wish I carried around one of those paparazzi cameras with enormously long lenses, instead of the small thing I wear slung around my neck.)

Here – really – they have moved to the further ridge and are lying down

There is even a black wolf or two there…

 

In due course they disappeared over the ridge.

”Turn around! Pronghorn!” We had seen a very graceful sculpture of a pronghorn at the National Museum of Wildlife Art at Jackson Hole.  Here were a whole crowd of them in the flesh. Such delicate creatures, not at all fazed by our presence. (They are sometimes called pronghorn antelope, but they are deer. Most photos slightly over-exposed.) It was back to Mammoth for lunch, and a look at the Lower Travertine Terraces. 

The extinct cone is known as the Liberty Cap, after the cap worn by colonial patriots in the Revolutionary War

 

Then we had a serious drive back north to Bozeman, where we were to catch our planes home the next day.  We stopped briefly at the Roosevelt Arch, but saw no wolves this time, but (apologies to those of a squeamish nature) I thought this bison poo there was really  artistic. It was too fast a drive for any real photography, though I did manage to get these bald eagles. We also saw white-tailed deer, and some bison, and I noticed a fabulous geological dyke.  Looking around at a comfort stop by the Yellowstone River, Drew told us that this was evidence that there had been an ice jam somewhere nearby. Approaching Bozeman I took a final picture of the mountains.

I think the form at the top of the mountain is a cirque.

It was minus 10ºC/plus 14ºF when we arrived at Bozeman.  The leaders commented that this had been the coldest trip they had ever known.

 

Most of my companions were going straight home.  I was to embark on the third and final part of my journey the following day – after a lie-in!

USA 2018 (13), Wolves?

Tags

American magpie, Bald eagle, BBC, BBC Wildlife magazine, Bighorn sheep, Bison, Cooke City, coyote, Don Hartman, elk, Golden eagle, Great grey owl, Jackson Hole, Lamar River, mountain goat, Natural Habitat, Raven, red fox, Rick McIntyre, Silver Gate, tracking wolves, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park

USA 2018 (13), Wolves?  It was still dark – and minus 33ºC/minus 28ºF – when we set off at 7 a.m., to look seriously for wolves on this Tuesday morning, 20th February. After all, the name of the trip was ‘Yellowstone: Ultimate Wolf and Wildlife Safari’. We were essentially retracing the last part of our journey the day before, westwards from Cooke City, which is just outside the north-east corner of Yellowstone National Park, back along the Lamar valley, and then continuing parallel with the Yellowstone River westwards a little further. At our first stop, where we looked in vain for a wolf pack before the sun had even risen above the mountains, we saw water vapour rising from the creek, as if a hot sun were evaporating the water prior to a scorching hot day! But I was told it was case of thermal inversion. Our next stop, for ‘comfort’ purposes, was in yet another beautiful spot. Then we pulled up again, when we saw a group of photographer tourists parked and looking upwards – at four sleeping coyotes, of which here are two.

Female bighorn sheep. Unusually, the female of this species has horns, but this one is lacking one of them.

Female bighorn sheep encounters bison, with no untoward outcome

We arrived at the furthest point intended for the day, where there was a good chance, we were told, of seeing a given pack of wolves.  We met Lizzie, who spends much of her time tracking the animals. She passed round a collar which had been round a wolf’s neck, and that felt quite spooky to me. It was pretty heavy, and we were reminded that the wolf is a very large animal, though it’s difficult to realise when you see them from a distance – IF ever we should see them, from a distance or no. No luck this morning and we made our way back to Cooke City for lunch, quite slowly as we kept seeing interesting things and stopping.

The other two ‘sleeping’ coyotes

Icing sugar? Ice cream? Thick snow?

Bald eagle

Male bighorn sheep

Pawing the snow aside to reach the vegetation.  Despite appearances, it is the legs of the sheep which are vertical, not the camera crooked

Ravens eating carcase, antler and vertebrae visible

Coyote

There is a tiny cream-coloured smudge in this photo, three-quarters of the way from the left and about a third down, below and to the right of the second big tree in from the right.  It is at least two, perhaps three miles away, and is a mountain goat. Tim somehow spotted it for us.

Enlarging this photo further would just make the animal very blurry indeed.

Cooke City

The view from my room, not seen in the dark the night before or in the morning

Plans for the afternoon were to meet a wildlife cinematographer, and then to have an individual choice between: resting for a while, going snow-shoeing, or further wildlife searching. Most people seemed to be going to opt for the last, including me. But then all plans changed. Wolves had been seen, where we had been that morning. So we ‘rushed’ off there, as safely as we could, but even so it took about an hour. En route we saw…

Male Bighorn sheep, presumably the same we had seen before lunch

A red fox, the only one all week. (Just how do these animals survive?)

And more bison. So difficult not to take photos of them.

Arrived at the same spot as the morning, we met Rick McIntyre, who gave us a fascinating talk on the ecology of the animal. [PS, three weeks later. Rick is featured in a fascinating article on one of the Yellowstone wolves in the March  edition of ‘BBC Wildlife Magazine’.] But the wolves had gone. ‘Hang on, there they are!’ the cry rang out from one of the leaders (now three as Tim from Nat Hab had joined us.).  A very, very long way away.  I was not the only one not to see them, whether through binoculars, cameras, or telescopes.  Try, try and try, no, we just couldn’t.  Moreover, it was said they were disturbing elk and bison, which would have been even more fascinating to see.  But no, not many of us saw them. Not us amateurs anyway.  I took several photos of where we were meant to be looking, hoping to blow them up and at least see them on my screen.

Not here

 

But here, on maximum zoom

No such luck. ‘They’ve gone now’. We left the scene, and made our way back towards Cooke City.

Golden eagle and American magpie on carcase

Fleeting glimpse of an elk which had not made its way to the refuge at Jackson Hole, 100 miles or so to the south

However, we stopped at Silver Gate, just a short distance from Cooke City (not a city but more a large village, by the way).  Our stop there was to meet the very patient Don Hartman.  But then wildlife photographers are used to being patient.

I was especially thrilled to meet him. In post (5) of these USA 2018 posts, I mentioned that there had been a second BBC series on Yellowstone just before I left for the trip. Don Hartman had taken its amazing footage on the Great Grey Owl family through the seasons. He show us some of this footage, some more which didn’t make the cut, and other work of his, then answered many questions. What a surprise and privilege to meet him, and here he is.

It was dark as we left for another good meal in Cooke City.  But a little warmer (!) as we bade each other goodnight, minus 25ºC/minus 13ºF.

[My apologies for the changes of type, which I have no idea how to correct. Retyping has made no difference. Any advice from fellow WordPress bloggers would be gratefully received.]

USA 2018 (12), the beautiful day’s end

Tags

Bison, Cooke City, Gardiner, Mammoth Hot Springs, Natural Habitat, Travertine, travertine terrace, wolves, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park

USA 2018 (12), the beautiful day’s end.  As we arrived in Mammoth Hot Springs, around 3.30,  we learned that contingency alternative accommodation had been reserved for us in Gardiner, but also that the authorities were hoping that the road to Cooke City would be cleared by 5.30.  So instead of continuing straight on with our journey, Jeremy took us on a visit that had been intended for a day or so later, while Drew stayed behind to do whatever had to be done.  This visit was to the Upper Travertine Terraces.  Where silica is the main mineral which separates out from the hot water in the Old Faithful area, at Mammoth it is limestone. (I did ask if the remains of a mammoth had been found in this area, but it seems the name comes from the size of the terraces.)  This was perhaps the only time in the whole of the trip where I might have preferred to have been there in warmer weather.  The extreme cold meant that the water vapour was so very extensive that it was difficult to get a full idea of the splendours. Our nevertheless lovely walk was a There-and-Back one.

From the start of our walk There

I kept finding myself a little behind the group as I stopped to take photos

When we were at the furthest extent of There, Jeremy had a call to say that the road to Cooke City was now clear, an hour earlier even than hoped. Great! We could continue on our way!

We start walking Back to the vehicles, in the shade, as the sun starts to disappear behind the mountains

In the course of this time in the Mammoth area we said goodbye to our faithful snow coaches, and reverted to Natural Habitat ‘ordinary’ Sprinters. On this last lap of the day, a further couple of hours’ driving, pretty well due east now, it was minus 23ºC/minus 9ºF.

 

Drew said there was a rule that drivers should do nothing to impede the intended paths of the wildlife, but that it was not always respected. Here it was the bison who moved over and decided to impede us!

 

And then it became too dark to take any more photos.

The last two days were to be spent concentrating on wolves…

USA 2018 (11), What a beautiful ride!

Tags

Cooke City, Gibbon Falls, Golden Gate, Huckleberry Ridge, Krakatoa, Mammoth Hot Springs, Mule deer, tuff, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park

USA 2018 (11), What a beautiful ride! Little commentary necessary for this magic afternoon.  I’m still in the seat next to the driver.(And since publishing the last post, I have discovered how to eliminate the blue effect of the smoky windscreen glass, although it does leave a slight distortion of colour towards brown.) Our first stop was at Gibbon Falls.

 

Just to prove I haven’t made up this whole extraordinary adventure

The walk back to the vans

Our road continued. The amateur geologist in me was fascinated by the yellow stone (er… Yellowstone?) through which we were driving.

Golden Gate

 

(My battery ran out!)

I have since discovered that the yellow stone is a thick layer of tuff thrown out 2.1 million years ago from one of the huge (Krakatoa was hundreds of times smaller) volcanic explosions, and it’s called Huckleberry Ridge Tuff.

What’s this? Mule deer!

What is it about an animal with snow on its nose?

It was about his time that we learned that Drew and Jeremy had been keeping something from us that had been worrying them for two whole days. We were (relatively) fast approaching a spot called Mammoth Hot Springs. The road onward to Cooke City, where we were to spend the next two nights, had been blocked for two days…

 

USA 2018 (10), Mud pots and fumaroles

Tags

Bison, Bombadier, Fountain Paint Pot, fumarole, geyser, hot spring, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen sulphide, Lower Geyser Basin, Madison Information Station, Mud pot, Old Faithful, red-breasted nuthatch, snow coach, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park

USA 2018 (10), Mud pots and fumaroles. Our next stop for a walk in Yellowstone National Park, this Monday, 19th February, was at the Lower Geyser Basin.

Dead lodge pole pines, with petrified bases. They have absorbed the prevailing silica material through their roots, and ‘frozen’.

More evidence that bison like warm water

Here we learned more from Drew about hot springs, fumaroles, and mud pots, having already learned about geysers, such as Old Faithful. We saw for ourselves how vegetation and even small birds could thrive in well below freezing ambient temperatures. At 7.30 this morning, it had been minus 2º Fahrenheit, which sounds even colder in Celsius – minus 19º.  Photos can show the water vapour/steam – but not the rotten eggs smell of hydrogen sulphide, H2S, (“very poisonous, corrosive, and flammable” – Wikipedia) which invaded the nostrils from time to time, and had done the previous day also.

 

Red-breasted nuthatch, at the edge of the field of mud pots.

Regaining our yellow snowcoaches, we found one of those dark red Bombadiers, the precursors of the modern vehicles we were travelling in. Onwards and northwards.

Snowmobiles approaching, and in the distance, the northern edge of the most recent (640,000 years ago) Lava Creek caldera

 

This is my very favourite bison portrait

Not a human footprint in sight

After a short while we reached our next warming hut, Madison Information Station I think, where we took lunch (in the company of a load of snowmobilists) – and were visited by a coyote.

  I saw no-one give him/her anything to eat!

 

USA 2018 (9) Old Faithful!

Tags

Bison, Bombadier, Old Failthful, Old Faithful Snow Lodge, Snowmobile, Sprinter, Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park

USA 2018 (9) Old Faithful! Monday 19th February was the very best day for me on the Yellowstone adventure, in terms of experiences. Masses of snow on the ground, none falling, Old Faithful, clear skies for much of the time, excellent wildlife sightings, and I had the privilege of being in the seat beside the driver all day. We were not due to leave until 10 a.m., but baggage had to be outside our rooms for collection by 7 a.m., so there was no chance of a lie-in.  I chose not to go out for a group walk at 8.00 a.m., so was able to enjoy a somewhat more leisurely breakfast than usual. I heard a rumour that Old Faithful was due to blow next at around 9.00.  (Formal predictions don’t start until a little later in the day.) I was planning to go out for a little walk on my own before departure, so my destination was clear.

Quietly steaming away

False alarm

Around 9.15, she did blow. I tried a couple of videos.

 

I’ve since read that the difference between the temperature of the emerging steam and that of the ambient atmosphere on a really cold day can be some 115 deg C/240 deg F.

I dawdled back to Snow Lodge.

A snow plough had cleared a broad path – the bank seen here came almost up to my waist.

We shortly set off in our Sprinter, a yellow one this time. (All our vehicles were Sprinters; they were just adapted for different road conditions.) Maximum speed allowed: 25 mph, but we were able to do considerably less for most of the time – all the better for enjoying the views.

The eye can disregard the smoked glass of the windscreen, the camera does not lie.

Bison enjoying the steam/water vapour – I am reminded of the picture at the Museum in Jackson Hole.

Snowmobiles and a Bombadier, the predecessor of our snowcoaches

Some had seen bison on their walk earlier in the morning.  I saw my first on this drive.

Some found their faces menacing.  I thought they were lovely and gentle – though it was safer to take these pictures through a wound-down window!  The animals were just feet away.

This video shows one of them using its strong neck muscles to shovel the snow out of the way with its muzzle to reach the vegetation.

 

It’s only 11.30. Such a full day still to come!

USA 2018 (7), Otters!

Tags

Flagg Ranch, Grand Teton National Park, Jackson Hole, JD Rockefeller Memorial Parkway, Lewis Falls, Natural Habitat, otter, River otter, Snake River, Yellowstone National Park

USA 2018 (7) Otters! If I had been disappointed at the lack of snow hitherto, I could have no complaint now. This was the view from my Lexington hotel bedroom at Jackson Hole on the Sunday morning.

It had snowed!

We set off northwards through Grand Teton National Park.  The views were beautiful, (though not as beautiful as the following day).

Like many of my photos, taken through the smoked glass of the vehicle window. And the mist.

Wanting the opportunity to take photos in the open, we stopped after a while by the Snake River/Jackson Lake, to be delighted to see through the mist and snow some little dots – which turned out to be river otters! Now otters, along with dolphins and felines, are my favourite animals – not very original, but there we are.

Emerging from their holt

 

There were swans as well – this is a very long way off…

Right on cue they came bounding in our direction, though they were not aware of us. (These photos were taken with my camera on maximum – x24 – zoom, and I have enlarged them a little since.)  Then two more otters revealed themselves, nearer to us, and the first group ran towards them.

I love how you can see their converging tracks.

All enjoyed a playful bundle for a couple of minutes.  Then, just like that, all seven decided to turn back. I decided it was time to take a video,

and the otters disappeared back to where they had come from.

The swans were still there

What a magical experience!  Many agreed at the end of the trip that this had been a real highlight.

We continued, leaving the Grand Teton NP, and stopped at the Flagg Ranch Information Station in the JD Rockefeller Memorial Parkway, for hot chocolate and a change of vehicle. (For some reason they didn’t charge me for my hot chocolate as I had provided my own insulated drinking can, a gift, along with a metal water bottle, from Natural Habitat at the outset.) We continued climbing, into Yellowstone National Park, the first (1872) NP ever declared in the world. The snow was getting thicker and falling faster. Snowcoaches it was now.

I don’t know how our luggage made it from hotel to hotel every night, but it was following us on skis at this point!

Our next stop – and descent from the vehicles – was to see the Lewis Falls. These are at the southern rim of the Yellowstone supervolcano caldera.  Not that I was aware of it at the time.

The NP is in the NE corner of Wyoming, slightly overlapping Montana and Idaho to the N and E respectively. The approximate line of the caldera is shown here in grey.

Our lunch stop was at West Thumb, in a ‘warming hut’.

 

The warming hut – outside

The warming hut – inside. Two of the Nat Hab water bottles can be seen.

The loos. Talk about amazing surroundings!

The hut was actually too warm for me, all wrapped up in the great boots and fantastic parka provided by Natural Habitat for the trip.  (The parka was 80% duck down and 20% feather.  I had packed silk sock liners and silk glove liners, which I wore under alpaca looped long socks and Hollofil mittens. I had very few problems with the cold, at which I was very surprised, given my usual hatred of anything below 21 deg C/70 deg F.  In addition, the leaders provided toe and hand warmers as topping up, of which I only availed myself on the last two days.)

We assembled to go for a walk in the snow.