Today I’m getting a bit more famous. Yep. That’s right.
As you probably know, every day BING.COM shows a different photo from somewhere around the world. Today’s photo happen to be one of truly yours. You can download and see this exact photo on my blog as well. Just look under the Wyoming photos.
How awesome is that?
My laptop died on Monday and it took couple days to get the tech with replacement motherboard, so its been another week with not much activity. It appears to be in good shape now, have to do a few more things to it today and then should be 100% ready, but thankfully blog writer is back available and I can look at my photos as well, so not missing the mystery photo day.
Pretty much the same scene was already shown once here on the blog, so if you are long termer or don’t mind browsing through my photos then you’ll be able to figure it out pretty quick. Maybe you saw this in person as well.
I put this photo through some HDR process to get pop from the colors, otherwise the original photo was fairly flat and nothing was popping up, color wise, like you see here.
There use to be life on this hill, birds were probably seating on those branches, eating bugs, no more. I can’t really remember if it smelled any bad though, I don’t think this one had any stink to it. What the name of this place?
Weekend Update: As a few of you (David, mithriluna and debibradford) correctly identified, this is the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellow Stone National Park. I’m not sure how long did it take for all that build up around the trees, I’d guess at least a few years, so it is pretty cool how they are standing there, even long time dead.
Last summer we spent a few days in Yellowstone National park and tried to cover most of what it can offer on such a short visit. We drove to places and hiked where we could. One of those hikes was to the peak of Mt Washburn. It started way down there in the warmer lands and brought us all the way to the snow levels and beyond. At one place we had to walk next to the 10+ feet high snow wall, what left of it from the winter. It was in early days of July, it probably melted by the end of the summer, maybe not, do you know?
We actually liked this part of the Yellowstone, it is less touristy, away from all those crowded hot springs and geysers. When we manage to visit it again, I’d like to spend a night or two at the Roosevelt Lodge, it is very rustic and not far from this place and many other less developed areas of the park.
This was probably one of the coolest hot springs in the Yellowstone National Park. There are many others, but none are this big, colorful and have sweet observation points from the near by hills. There is a boardwalk around it if you want to get a close look, and probably 99% of the tourists do just that and then move on to other hot springs or geysers. I knew that there is a way to see it from above, so we found another parking area with trailhead that takes you along the river, where at one point you can climb up the hill to get a better view of the Grand Prismatic. The hike up the hill is not the easiest one, it goes up, almost vertically, with switch backs, across fallen pine trees and dusty soft grey dirt. From the spot where I took this photo there were no one else but us, pretty much everyone else turned around somewhere way below. Their loss.
We had some snacks, enjoyed the view, while shooting out once in a while: “Bear, Bear”. It was grizzly season and mother with a few cubs was sighted just a few days ago in this area.
As always, all of my photos are better looking at high resolution – all you have to do is click on it and it will open in my photo gallery.
On our second day in Yellowstone we decided to go hike at the Mt Washburn. On the way there from the Mammoth Hot Springs we took Blacktail Plateau Drive, it is a none paved road that can be taken at the much lower speed in hopes that some wild life will show up and allow to stop and observe it a bit more freely compare to the main roads at the park. For almost entire drive we didn’t see anything but some great landscape views, until almost the end of it when we spotted black bear in far away distance. He was traveling along side the mountain and we could watch him for about five minutes before he disappeared in the forest.
Couple minutes later I spotted this guy seating on the top of the tree and took the shot right as he decided to take off in search of better hunting grounds.
After having a great hike to the top of the Mt Washburn we were going to leave the park and drive to the Bozeman Montana, but before we left the park we had three more quick encounters. Two of them were right on the Grand Loop Road, a few miles before Mammoth Hot Springs. First we saw this scrawny red fox. He was just jogging along side the road, I’m sure it is easier to travel on the road than in that sick brush. Unfortunately, you can’t just stop or pull over while driving Grand Loop Road, it is very narrow and while there are some pullouts, they are few and wild life kind of does not care about it.
Then, suddenly we saw this coyote, same running on the road, looking for something to kill on the side of it. Cute little fella.
Finally, right before we exited Yellowstone Park at the North Exit we some a bunch of Elk. BTW, if you ever visit Yellowstone and want to see a lot of Elk, then make sure to visit Mammoth Hot Springs, it is infested with them.
All of the above images are available in high resolution, just click on them.