Halloween!

Work food

Dressed for handing out candy success

Sam's ready to help with treats

Unless it gets too cold

Or she gets too sleepy

EMS World Expo

Was planning to visit my parents in August. Then Carrie mentioned that she was going to Vegas to the EMS World Expo. Hmmmm.... Vegas... Warm. Hot. Pools. Where there are drinks with little umbrellas in them. Okay, you don't have to ask me twice. Or, in this case, at all. I'm not a huge Vegas fan but the summer here wasn't very warm and I was needing some blood boiling days to get over the long winter we just had and the long winter that we're slated to have. I didn't need to go to the conference. It was a chance to get away someplace to be with friends but not have to spend all my time with them. Then, it turned out to be cheaper to sign me up for the conference than it was to sign up the other five people who wanted to go. Oy.
Any way you cut it, though, I had fun. Lost more money than I meant to but I also didn't eat as much food as I had thought so it evened out. Got to eat some great food. Learned some EMS. It was pretty good.
My favorite lecture was "When Rosie met Johnny" about women in EMS. The speaker was dynamic adn very knowledgeable.
Lloyd really enjoyed traveling with Carrie and I. Neither one of us finished out meals so he got quite a bit of eextras. For a beanpole, the man sure can pack it away.

 Me on the Monorail

 Got to watch how Vegas would handle a mass casualty incident

One more thing about my YA class

I need to write about my fifth day of class but I don't have my notes right here in bed with me so I won't be getting out from underneath my warm and fluffy down comforter to get them.

Anyway, it was a late summer this year and the spring flowers were still out in force. Here are some of the pictures I took.

Day 4

Our first stop of the day was Mud Pots. I haven't been there in quite awhile so this was kind of a fun trip.
Then we hiked Elephant Back. It was a wonderful hike and reminded me how much I liked that hike. I had just enough time to have a drink with some of the group and then head over to Old Faithful to meet Jane Wittlinger and her family for some dinner. It was a LONG wait but the Mediterranean dish at the Inn was wonderful.

Geology of Lake - Day 3

We started out early at 7:30 again. The first stop was the LeHardy Rapids. This is a major spawning route for the cutthroat trout.  This is the "hinge line" of the deformation of the caldera. The Sour Creek dome is across the river with an exposed potion of the Lava Creek cut at the bottom.
We then headed up to Hayden Valley, the "Serengeti of the Yellowstone." The diversity in the area is very unusual for being inside the caldera (rhyolite is nutrient poor so it doesn't usually support a lot of vegetation.)
Next stop: Artist Point.You can see the different types of sediments on top of the lava flows. At the very top of the clifss are kames. All of these are representative of a single flow event. The vertical joints in the lava flow are caused by cooling.
Coming out of Canyon out of Dunraven: the best way to tell when you leave the caldera is when the vegetation changes. We stopped at the first pullout on the way up to Mount Washburn. From there, you can look south to Mount Sheridan. There are lava flows evidenced by steep sides, bulbous fronts and flat, hummocky tops. Pitchstone Plateau is one of the largest examples of this in the park.
We then took the Road to Norris. We stopped at Nymph Lake. Across the road is Lava Creek. Looking toward the lake, there is a new thermal feature. It showed up in 2003. It looks like a small burnout that is moving in a North/South direction.

We then started up the Monument Geyser trail. It's a trail that climbs 1,000 feet in a mile. It's short but steep. The high side of the road is rhyolitic lava flow and according to Lisa, "We're on a big fissure here." The ph's in this area vary from about .2-4. At the top, it's an acid-sulfate system, but Beryl Springs at the bottom is a neutral chloride system and about 6.5 ph. The spires up here were created under water. Lisa is supposing that these particular spires may have even been formed underneath Yellowstone Lake (aka, it extended all the way up to Monument.) The spires on Monument are about 16-24 thousand years old. Th spires in the Lake have been uranium-dated to 11,000 years old.
After a fairly heavy rainfall on our way back down, we headed off to the Madison Junction. It was
The Yellowstone caldera isn't going to erupt again, there isn't enough magma left in the chamber. However, there could be another caldera-forming eruption somewhere else in the
park.

Volunteering with the Ed Folks

Every once in awhile, I like to volunteer with other folks in the park. Knowing that I have Mondays off, my friend Trudy called and asked me if I'd like to go out with her and Michael and break some trail so that their next group of fourth graders wouldn't sink up to their waists. And it would have been up to their waists because I was definitely up to my mid-thigh most of the way. It was fun. Mostly. it was like doing the Stairmaster over and over and over and over... Even with the snowshoes on, I'd lift my leg up, up, up get it above the level of the snow, step... and fall right through. For four hours. Four. Hours. This was happening to both Trudy and I. Michael couldn't understand it as he just tramped right along, never even sinking in up to his ankles. Blergh. Good exercise though.

Stay there. Just... stay there.

Michael, aka "He who floats on snow"

I always forget how beautiful the park is in winter

Potts Hot Springs Basin--September

Heidi got the hookup with Ralph Taylor to get us a tour out in Potts Hot Spring Basin. It's normally off limits but... I know people who know people. We also met Dot and Jim Sweeney who came with Ralph. The basin is split into the Upper and Lower Mercurial Groups as well as North Beach and South Beach. Mercurial refers to the emotion (wildly swinging) and not the element. Basically, the tree line is the separation between the Upper and Lower. North Beach is mostly mudpots.

The basin was named for Daniel Potts who

was an early trapper. There are something like 400 features in this basin. There are obligate plants in the basin. Ones that can grow at high temperatures. According to Ralph, no one knows why the plants can stand the high temps, there is a possible bacteria that may help guard the roots.

In the various hot springs, there can be two types of bubbles. Gas bubbles don't change size don't change size but steam bubbles hit the cooler water and collapse.

Lower Mercurial Group has bigger hotter pools and geyser.

There was tall, yellow grass called "Tufted Hair Grass." It's presence means that it is probably wet or was wet for most of the year. Normally, you can sort of trust that stepping on grass tufts will keep you dry and unburned. That's not true here. You also have to be careful of the thermal quicksand. Uh... huh. This is why you can only come with a guide.

It takes decades to build a shelf like this

Why? Why would you walk through a hot spring?

Man made lagoon, the old road is holding it in

They built the original road over a thermal area

A cliff is on South Beach. This wall is where a hot spring used to be, a cross-section of 30 years of hot spring activities

Silicified bacterial mat

Effluessence, usually gypsum but Ralph didn't know what this one was

More bacterial mat