Yellowstone

It was around 8:00am when we got to Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the United States. But that was only the entrance. We had to drive a long time to get to Old Faithful. It’s a big park! When we got there we went to the geyser, but it had just erupted, so we had to wait 45 minutes.

So, we went to the visitor center to get the junior ranger books and we got two different ones. We went back to the area around Old Faithful and worked on them there.

I learned that Yellowstone is above a supervolcano (what I mean by that is that a long time ago, where Yellowstone is, a giant volcano erupted, leaving a crater that Yellowstone is today. There is still active lava underneath and that’s why there are various hot water formations all around the park.)

It took 50 minutes instead of 45 for the geyser to erupt. Old Faithful is one of the few geysers that has a schedule for when it will erupt. It shot out water for about 4 minutes! It usually erupts for 2 minutes and thirty seconds.

I saw it launch hot water very high in the air and I saw a ton of steam everywhere! And then it went down a little and then it went even higher. Then it ran out of water and went lower and lower until there was no water left.

I thought it was really awesome!

Then we headed to the paint pot walkway where I saw a ton of hot lakes, steam geysers, and mud pots (hot lakes are just pools of hot water, steam geysers are geysers that instead of shooting out water they shoot steam, and mud pots are similar to hot lakes just they have mud instead of water).

After the walk, we went to lunch. While I was eating I saw old faithful erupt again! But this time it didn’t erupt that high or for as long.

Then we went over to a different walkway and in the front it had a geyser always erupting. There were also a bunch of mini geysers and a river that went through it. The river started out cold a then it got hotter and hotter as it progressed until it was steaming.

We left that place and headed for a different walkway where we measured the temperature in the pool with a heat gun that we got from this junior scientist pack. There were blue pools, a gray pool, a yellow pool and a giant pool. After that we made the long journey back home to the RV. Until next time…

Cole

My name is Cole Sherman. I’m sixteen years old and I plan to be an inventor when I get older. My favorite animal is the wolf. I really like visiting new places and experiencing different adventures.