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| Yellowstone may not be the prettiest park in the nation (though it has its moments), but it's definitely among the weirdest. There's no higher concentration of geothermal features on the continent, and the only other places on the planet where you'll find more geothermal activity are New Zeland, Siberia, and Australia. | What's amazing is how much plant life grows near the hot pools. Obvioulsy nothing in the hot areas can survive, but just a few hundred feet from an erupting geyser, there are stands of trees. | The orangey muck here is bacteria that grows in the warm waters. The color of the organisms changes depending on the temperature of its surroundings, sorta like a biological isothermal display. | The hot pools are full of the most amazingly blue water. They're deep, too -- don't fall in. No, I'm not kidding. They have entire books full of stories of people who got too close to the hot pools and died a grisly, boiling death. | Behind this fumarole (a geothermal feature kinda like a geyser, but less spectacular, where steam rises out of cracks in the ground) you can see the wooden walkway that's been erected over the hot area. You can't safely step off the path, both because of the extreme heat and because the surface is completely unstable. | Speaking of instability, there's a random sink-hole. | The heated water seeping up out of the earth tends to carry minerals along with it, which deposit as the water cools, forming shallow, terraced lakes. | I wish I remembered the name of this geyser. It's something like Sparkling or Shimmering Geyser, but I couldn't tell you for sure. I think it spouts all the time, but don't quote me on that. (Next time we go to Yellowstone, I'm doing some research, so I don't feel like such a doof trying to describe these things.) | Close-up on the bacteria deposits. Squiiishy. | Random dead snag, stuck in the middle of the morass. You can sorta see the gradiation of growing-to-not-growing in the background. The extreme heat prevents stuff from growing during the warmer months, but in the winter, it keeps the foliage verdant, which is why so much plant and animal life can be found in Yellowstone. | More wasteland kinda stuff. I have dozens of photos of this, but I won't torture you with all of them. | Just, y'know, a few of them. | Maybe someone thinks these are as neat as I do? | Check out that storm building in the background. I love that. |