Skirting the inferno: The land of stinky air

At the moment, I could imagine what it must have been like for the Romans in Pompeii in 79 AD. As figures passed me in the midst, I held my folded handkerchief close to my mouth and struggled for breath. My glasses were fogged, and my lungs were protesting the thin air and the oppressive steam that boiled up from the ground. I held my breath from one steam-free spot to another and turned back. This part of Yellowstone didn't work for me.

We got here Sunday, June 15, Father's Day, expecting a 10-hour trip from Wenatchee, and taking 13. The last hour was spent fighting fog on a road with a fading fog line and a centerline that disappeared from time to time. The reflecters at the side of the road, patches of fog, dark of night and rainy mist created the sensation that we were driving in a very dark house of mirrors.

And on Monday it rained. But that just meant instead of hiking, we could take a road trip. We headed for Old Faithful.

If your hat blows off your head to a spot off the trail, it's not smart to retrieve it.

Remember that musical ad about Hamm's being the beer from the land of sky blue waters? Yellowstone is the land of boiling waters. Sometimes stinking waters. Sometimes deadly waters. The reason that hat in the photo above is abandoned is because it can be dangerous to step off the beaten path at Yellowstone. What appears to be solid ground may be a crust over a scalding cauldron. Although the steam can irritate the lungs, on one occasion it was far more than that. A ranger told one group that five buffalo were found dead one time; the speculation was that a burst of steam carrying arsenic may have caught them.

It's 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. I'm tired, and so I'm going to hit the sack. So I'll close now with some more photos of our first day, focusing on the waters of Western Yellowstone. I hope you enjoy the photos and the discoveries we make along the way.

Love,

Robert