Saturday Shot 23 AUGUST 2008
by Lynn Daniels on Saturday, August 23, 2008 at 2:33 pm
For today’s Saturday Shot, we’ll return to Yellowstone. In fact, this is the first photo from this vacation I’ve posted that was taken in Yellowstone. Of course, since I’ve only posted three photos, that’s no biggie… Let’s just forget about that and move on.
This is Grand Prismatic Spring, the most colorful thermal feature in the park. All the colors in the spring are caused by bacteria — every time you see a color change, that indicates a change in the water temperature, which means a different kind of bacteria resides there. Whatever the scientific reasoning, the result is absolutely gorgeous.
Look closely, and you’ll see the boardwalk behind the spring. That’s where my photos of the spring were taken from in the past. This year, though, I was determined to get a more overhead shot. Last time we visited (in 2006), we hiked a trail behind this geyser basin down to Fairy Falls. It was a very buggy day, and we were tired, and I seem to remember thinking we’d hiked all the way to Michigan with all the walking we’d done. Well. along that trail, there was a pretty high hill, and I’d heard on the forums I visit that climbing that hill will get you high enough to get the overhead shots I wanted.
I told SoundGuy we were climbing that hill. Lucky for me he was all for it.
So we got to the hill and found the footpaths many photographers (and other types of people, for that matter) before us had worn into the ground during their climbs to the top. The climb was a bit hairy in spots, and I scared SoundGuy to death because I’m not always the most steady person on my feet, but the reward, as you can see, was more than worth it.
When we got to the top, there was already another photographer up there with his tripod. He left soon after we arrived, leaving us the whole hill. All four of us took shots — well, MiniMe, LittleDude and I took shots. SoundGuy shot video. Sadly, on his video you can hear me stumbling around, and you can also hear my shutter just going a mile a minute.
When we finally thought we’d captured the view as well as we could, we hiked back down. Just in time, too, because on the way down we came across at least a half dozen people headed for the top. When we got back down, we did the geyser basin walk, but soon had to abandon it — we could see a pretty nasty looking storm rushing in. Not long after we got back into the truck, the rains came, and the thunder came, and the lightning came.
And then came the hail.
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