yar. halloween has passed and i'm reluctant to work on my personal statements for grad school.
damn those.

so to pass a little time, i thought i'd get back to finishing up with the pictures from my trip to the east coast and back. we left off in yellowstone, so we'll pick up there and virtually end there, with a few extra miscellaneous pics. so here we go. . .

this may get a little monotonous, or maybe i'll filter out a few, but here's what we got of old faithful. it was sitting there a while. its a little less faithful than it used to be, but they got it down to how long the 'eruption' is will tell how long until the next one. if its short, then the next one will be in about 40 minutes. if it was longer, like 30 - 50 seconds long, then it will be an hour and a half til the next eruption. i don't remember it being that complicated the last time i went. but, of course, i was really young and don't remember much from 15 years ago.
that picture i showed actually wasn't old faithful, but the one immediately to the left (north) of it. old faithful is actually that little guy to the right that's only smoking and not spitting up hot water.
so here's the bitch in all her glory.
she kept going! oh wait. subdued.

behind old faithful was a mound of smokey goodness. heated water flowed down to the river leaving a visible stain on the slope. now comes the cool shit.

geysers all along the river formed leaving clear blue pool's of boiled water. check out how it builds up a lip to contain the water. others are still working on it and bubble over into the river.
before we move on, since it was in the lineup, here is the backside of old faithful. it's that little puff up there. the river is behind me.
now onto one of the coolest geysers because you can actually see the topography of it through the crystal blue water. i believe they call it the starfish geyser. wonder why. . .
see it drop off into the void!?!
we dropped off at the old ass lodge by old faithful which used to be the only building on the park. not no more. theres more building now for tourism and those who can't quite 'rough it'.

further north from old faithful was a row of more geysers. they have boardwalks that go through these random geysers. sometimes the smoke wafts your way. its refreshing on the lungs and sinuses like my steam room at work, but when you actually smell it, it reeks of sulfur. you can tell the high amount of sulfur in this one small stream finding its way down to the main river. it is indicated by its electric yellow color.
other brilliant colors mark the drop offs into the heated unknown.
unfortunately, sometimes the smoke gets in the way of what might otherwise be a really good view. other times, the smoke can't even hinder the geyser's beauty.
here we got a geyser that almost looks manmade along the river where all the other geysers dump their water.
holy crap! how is this natural!?!
this is the beginnings of that gatorade-colored water, and the large geyser that feeds it.
other geysers look like they have recently broken its way to the surface.
you couldn't leave the boardwalk the park service provided for you because of the hazard where you may fall through the fragile, thin-crusted areas and get scalded by the boiling waters below, so i couldn't get a very good picture of what looked like a 'geyser river' with a couple of piled-on landbridges there on the right.

moving more north, to more geysers, we come to my favorite picture of the trip.
with nothing between me and my subjects but a small fallen tree, i snapped this shot.
buffalo happily grazing. that burly-looking dude by that first tree on the left in the forefront was checking me out for a few seconds, but then returned to his business, sensing no threat.
further up the river were more buffalo. you can barely see them at the foot of that hill. i guess just take in the scenery of the river and the geysers outlining it. this picture better illustrates the amount of buffalo that can be seen around yellowstone.

there are more fantastic buffalo pictures to come, along with an exuberant amount of a river-crossing bull elk, but those are going to have to wait until a later date. i have to work a full shift at fred's tomorrow, then celebrate my birthday with my family some 11 days late.
i guess that's what happens when you pull 12 hour days once in a while.
poor me.
who'm i kidding. free dinner, woot!