To Canyon and Back 12/6/14

A nice Sunday read. Sorry it has been a while since the last note. I missed my deadline by a day but have been active doing things not too worthy of writing about in its own. Like watching football, playing some basketball and dominating in some ping pong games against Bob.

*Warning, photos below are not on a great level due to the sun hiding behind many clouds and overcast.

About the tour of Canyon:

I reserved a spot early that morning and still managed to show up way earlier than needed, regardless I landed a spot on a tour with three guests. Two of them were from Colorado and the other from Texas. We saw some elk on the way out of Mammoth heading toward Norris Geyser Basin. We stopped by the maintenance to get a tire tred looked at. The bus driver said it was a good thing to do and the guy that tightened said that if we hadn't, problems would have occurred.

The first stop we made was at Roaring Mountain. With all the steam and gray clouds; it was impossible to take a great picture. Below is the water running off the springs with a branch above the warm water creating enough condensation to create "cool" looking snow on the branch. I had to manipulate the picture a lot in order to show what I saw.

The next picture is my favorite from the day. On top of the mountain were some lodgepole pines that were barely visible from the fog that the mountain created. While looking at this beast, which I have seen many times, it was the first time I could here it roar. My GoPro didn't pick up the sound unfortunately. Sadly, every time I had past it before, cars would drive by and people would be talking which would muffle out the sound of the mountain.

Continuing to Norris, the bus drive said that he typically would see a swan swimming around, and we did! There were a lot of water fowl on this trip but that's about all we saw; water fowl.

Below is a picture of Norris from the road. You can obviously see that I took this from inside the bus while it was moving; hence the reflections. Like I said earlier in the post, the sky and steam would all blend together. In fact, you can see a white circle on the upper left of the picture above the reflection...that's the sun... :(

The Norris Museum is the gateway to the Norris Geyser boardwalk. It had a healthy amount of snow on the roof as did the trees around it.

Due to my lack of sleep the previous night I was a little tired before the tour had even started. As we hopped on the snow coach to Canyon and started to drive; I started to doze off. I felt really bad about it, and still do. The guide had some much knowledge about everything there is to drive by but I was just too tired to stay awake. We started off at the Upper Falls Outlook and the snow was coming down rather frequently; light and fluffy. The picture gives a good idea on the visibility of the whole trip. The waterfall was frozen on top and outside, but the water continued to smack into the canyon below releasing the sound of falling water even though we couldn't see it.

Here is another picture of some water fowl we saw. I do not recall the full name of the ducks but it something about "golden eye" ducks...I'm sure someone can answer that in the comments...

After lunch we checked out the Lower Falls and went to the Upper Falls Outlook on the South Rim. The outlook was closed due to the amount of snow that had piled up on it. It's about 10 feet high with a staircase that has about 10 steps to enter it, all of that was completely snowed over and on the bottom step was about three to five feet of snow. After the falls we headed out to Hayden Valley. The visibility was worse out there. As we were turning around a man from Colorado had pointed out the coyote. He was about three hundred yards out and this is, sadly, the best picture I have of him...

I don't recommend going on a snow coach if it's overcast/cloudy or you didn't receive much rest/sleep. The tour was filled with many interesting facts from Mammoth all the way to Hayden and back. One of the more interesting facts I learned was this.

Limestone, Granite and Obsidian are all forms of Lava. Each one is cooled a different way. Obsidian is filled with certain Isotopes that, if tested, can be traced back to its origin.

So if you grab Obsidian from Yellowstone and try to sell it as Hawaiian Obsidian, and they test it, they'll deny it. (Let's face it though, if you were going to buy Obsidian, you'd want it from the Mega Volcano and not from Hawaii...at least I would.)

Thanks for tuning in. This week is filled with a split weekend in order to help out a coworker. I have an interview Monday for a management position in the park, followed by a dinner shift that night with Tuesday off and dinner on Wednesday. Plans for the day off are unknown but should be good.

*Yesterday was a day off and I did nothing but relaxed. :/  I was rather active with some snow sculpting with Katie and a game of Monopoly with Derris, Robert and Jenna; Jenna won. :(

Until the 15th, I say live long and prosper. I see the future, and it's a truck. I'm sure I'll post a picture on that. Also, the poll has spoken and I'm currently on the search for another blogger. I'm not sure what type of application or initiation process will take place but when I do, this will be the first place to look.

(Anyone interested in being part of the blog can email me at mackeag@gmail.com or talk to me in person).