road trip     

Bison against a backdrop of steaming hot springs and fumaroles. This herd was meandering across the road and tied things up for about 40-minutes because people were stopping their cars and getting out to take pictures despite a Ranger being there with a bullhorn explaining with an authoritative if not completely annoyed tone of voice "Maintain your speed. Do not stop your car."

Where the geothermal events occur, trees don't have a chance. The crust looks solid around these hot spots, but it's not.

Yummy bacteria mats. By the way, none of this smells particularly pleasant, but I suppose that since this whole place is one massive active volcano there could be worse things than the sulphuric stink of super-heated steam...

A fumarole, or steam vent, making enough noise that it was hard to converse.

The boiling mud pots! Imagine a huge pot of thick oatmeal boiling away on the stove and multiply by some factor of a thousand.

Another fumarole. These things never quit, which means the molten rock heating the water down there is not very far down.

many of these hot springs drain down into the rivers and creeks that run through the park.

The edge of Grand Prismatic Spring. This huge geothermal feature is briliantly colorful and yet frustrating to photograph because of all the steam and - wait for it - the massive crowds of people who almost push each other off the boardwalk trying to take selfies.

And right there along the edges of these steaming sulphuric scalding hot springs flowers are growing.

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Grand Prismatic Springs drains off along these rivulet veins etched into the rock.

Grand Prismatic Spring.

This is a photo from the National Park Service; it's what Grand Prismatic Spring really looks like.

Excelsior Geyser Basin.

Gibbon Creek Falls.