Lomography

Fountain Paint Pot Trail, Summer Road Trip - LomoStop #3
written by dirklancer on September 10th, 2009 , 2 comments (1 vote)

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In July 2009 I took an 8000 km road trip with my wife, two young children, and my mother- and father-in-law. Yes. That sounds a little crazy – but in order to keep my sanity (and test theirs) – I took along 10 cameras and 40 rolls of film. We passed through 10 American states and 3 Canadian provinces, and I only fell asleep drooling on myself once.
Stepping out of the van here it feels like we’ve entered an alien planet…reminds me a little of Star Trek. I imagined for a moment that I was on an “away team” and I quickly checked to see if I was wearing a red shirt. Black shirt. Safe.
The box at the beginning of the trail advertises trail guides for a suggested donation of 50 cents. I’m usually generous with this kind of thing, but I just paid $25 for a 7 day National Park Pass that I’m only going to use for about 4 hours – I thanked the NPS for the free trail guide.

The boardwalk here is mostly wooden, about 8 feet wide, and crawling with tourists from every state, province, and beyond. It’s nice to see that they’ve been replacing older sections of the walkway; it feels quite safe considering there’s no railing and we’re surrounded by boiling water flowing freely from natural thermal features.

We didn’t have much time at all – the theme of this ‘sampler tour’ – in Yellowstone National Park, since we have many many more miles (that’s “kilometres” in American) to cover today, so we chose this particular walk because it boasts all four of the types of thermal features found throughout the park: geysers, fumaroles, mudpots, and hot springs.

The names of the features are great: Bacteria Mat, Jelly Geyser, Red Spouter, Spasm Geyser – I’m not sure if someone was trying to be slightly funny with the names, or just accurately descriptive with a small vocabulary.

As we begin to make our way back to the van, the wind blows a floating steam bath across our path. It’s oddly refreshing, despite the rotten egg smell. This fantastically alien place is so full of sights and sounds and smells and everything, but we must forge ahead to the next stop on the sampler tour – and get the kids into the air-conditioned vehicle before they go from medium rare to well done…