More than meets the eye

Grand Prismatic Spring - Yellowstone National Park

This and the photo at the very bottom of this blog were taken of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone. The different colors are produced by bacterial mats. Different types and colors of bacteria grow the different temperatures of the warm water coming from the big blue spring in the middle.

It is kind of deceiving. You get walk up to one very large geyser that is overflowing warm water in the cool river below. Everything is at eye level. You walk around this huge boardwalk and come upon this sight. The steam is rising from the hot water and it is kind of hard to see. But I lifted my camera to my eye and through the polarizing filter I could see much more of the beautiful arrays of colors. I let my friends take a look through the camera and they were amazed at what the camera could see that they could not.

The panoramic photo at the bottom was stitched together using Photoshop. It took 6 photos to make up this one panoramic. I would have loved to have been on that hill overlooking the spring. If you look just to the right of center, on top of the smaller hill are two small colored dots. Those are people who made the voyage to get a perspective that few people ever get.

©2009 Laura Smetak All rights reserved. All photos and stories on this blog are copyrighted and use without the artists express permission is prohibited.

What's 120 more miles?

Shadow Riders - Rawlins, Wyoming

When in Wyoming, here's a tip...Plan your day to leave as early as possible and stop around 3:00 in the afternoon to find a hotel if you don't have reservations.

Our 3600 mile trek this summer was based on living on a wing and a prayer for a hotel, never officially planning each nights stop. Just wherever the road led us. Five couples all needing rooms each night.

We left the north gate of Yellowstone early in the morning, crossing over the Beartooth Mountains, stopping for lunch in Cody. We drove all day to the next stop in the middle of Wyoming somewhere north of Lander. We were met by the hotel clerk who informed us that all the hotels within 120 miles were booked.

It was 5:30, getting dark and we would have to hop on the bikes and ride the 120 miles to next town of Rawlins. So what's an extra 2 hours and 120 miles? Five Harleys, full bore down one of the most desolate highways I had ever seen (talk about a rumble of loud pipes). Nothing to see but a long-ass strip of pavement stretched out in front. Not to mention having to be on guard for that one crazy antelope who may wish to spring across the road at any moment.

We were 5 miles from Rawlins when some of our riders couldn't take one more minute of the dropping temperatures that came with the setting of the sun. They needed to stop on the side of the highway to gear up.

I grabbed my point and shoot from my jacket pocket and snapped this photo. The sun was low and it stretched our shadows across the highway toward the storm off to our east. I like the photo. It seems to capture the mood of extra 120 miles at the end of a long day.

©2009 Laura Smetak All rights reserved. All photos and stories on this blog are copyrighted and use without the artists express permission is prohibited.