From Vegas to Yellowstone

How often does someone do anything for you, that you could not do for them? Apart from cooking a nice exotic meal, that is.
Not that often I reckon, and it's usually your parents that do it.
So when our friends Willem & Eva invited a bunch of friends and their kids to Las Vegas for the renewal of their wedding vows, we hopped on a plane with our eight & six year old boys. Three days of Vegas wedding ceremony, followed by a road trip. That is what this story is about...

Vegas is not the kind of place that I usually tend to visit, because I am not a city person. But the crazy team had spared no expense and so we found ourselves shooting holes in car wrecks, doing some fine dining amidst thousands of (degenerate) gamblers or seeing Steve Aoki live in the infamous Omnia club.

After three days of jetlagged partying, I picked up the rental car and we headed North, away from the 45°C heat. The plan was to visit Zion and Bryce, head North towards Salt Lake city with the infamous Bonneville salt flats, followed by visiting Yellowstone.

Zion Canyon is an immense, 25km long and up to 800m deep canyon carved over millions of years by the Virgin River. This process is still ongoing, with the river moving over a million tons of sediment each year. Zion is a part of the "Grand Staircase," a sequence of rock layers that stretches from the Grand Canyon to Bryce Canyon. The bottom layers of rock at Bryce Canyon are the top layers at Zion, and the bottom layers at Zion are the top layers at the Grand Canyon, showcasing a vast geological timeline.

The main target in Zion was to see California condor. I saw these birds in 2009 in California, when the world population totaled around 360 birds. Now 16 years later, there are around 600 birds. Lead poisoning still takes a lot of lives, with hunters reluctant to start using copper bullets. Every bird gets caught, wing tagged and receives a satellite tag. We saw two birds through the scope, no pics sadly.

What we did see was a great hunt:

We were looking at these tadpoles when I suddenly saw movement through my viewfinder...

Desert bighorn and mule deer were also present:

A few hours from Zion NP lies Bryce canyon which has even crazier vistas. Winter puts a snow blanket over Bryce, and summer gets super hot, so this place too is not teaming with wildlife. But the views make up for it.
The most defining feature of Bryce Canyon is the thousands of "hoodoos" that fill its natural amphitheaters. Hoodoos are tall, thin spires of rock that have been sculpted by millions of years of erosion. While they exist in other places, Bryce Canyon has the largest collection on Earth.

Unlike Zion, Bryce Canyon is not a single canyon carved by a central river. Instead, it's a series of horseshoe-shaped amphitheaters carved into the eastern edge of a high plateau. The erosion that created the amphitheaters and hoodoos is a result of a process called "frost wedging." Water seeps into cracks in the rock, freezes and expands, and eventually breaks the rock apart. This process, combined with rain and wind erosion, has created the park's iconic formations.

In between the hoodoo's there are amazing pine and fur trees growing, also providing a scale to the size of these rock formations. The most impressive are the bristlecone pines. The oldest trees in Bryce are 1600 years old!

On the animal front, Bryce was very calm, although I did manage to show the kids some migrating Rufous hummingbirds.

We then drove North through the beautiful state of Utah. Many hours of driving in empty desert and farmland, only to arrive in Wendover just across the border in Nevada. Why do people come to Wendover? As always, to gamble...

It is however, home to something far more interesting: The Bonneville salt flats.

The flats are a remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville, a massive prehistoric lake that covered a large portion of western Utah during the last Ice Age. As the lake dried up, it left behind an expansive, dense crust of salt, primarily sodium chloride (table salt). This crust can be several feet thick in the center. The landscape is not a permanent fixture; it is a dynamic environment that changes throughout the year. In the winter, the flats may flood with a shallow layer of water, and as it evaporates in the hot summer, the salt re-crystallizes, maintaining the flat surface.

Speed racing is perhaps the most famous aspect of the Bonneville Salt Flats. The incredibly flat and hard surface of the salt pan makes it the perfect natural speedway. Since 1914, it has been the site of countless land speed record attempts, drawing racers and spectators from around the globe.

I couldn't bring up the topic of speed, and not mention the king of speed, that also can be seen around Salt Lake: The fastest plane ever made, the SR71 Blackbird. For hours, I can talk about that plane, since it is one of the marvels of human engineering as well as photography.

The SR-71 Blackbird is exceptional because it was an engineering marvel that remains the fastest (manned) aircraft ever built. It was designed to be untouchable, relying on its incredible speed—over 3000km/h—and high altitude (above 30km) to outrun any threat. Its unique features included full titanium construction, the infamous Pratt & Whitney J58 engines that could transition into a ramjet-like operation at high speeds and last but not least: thermal expansion. The fuselage was designed with loose panels that would heat up and expand, sealing the airframe only when at cruising speed. When it stood still, it would leak fuel!

All this without a single computer. The SR-71 was a Cold War icon that completed thousands of reconnaissance missions without ever being shot down. A military plane without weapons then, but with the most advanced camera system that existed at the time. SR-71 cameras were special for their extremely high resolution, capable of capturing incredible detail from high altitudes (e.g., a 12cm object photographed whilst flying at Mach 3 from 30km altitude),
Only 93 pilots ever flew the blackbird and they have great stories to tell, like this one (worth your listen).
They always had two planes standby in Japan, two in England and ten in the US, that was it.

Just the fact that for decades, the USA was able to have a blackbird in the air anywhere in the world to take pictures, accompanied by its own tanker planes (it refueled in the air multiple times per mission) with dedicated special SR 71 fuel, 24/7... still blows my mind.

Anyway, I digress.

YELLOWSTONE! was our main interest this trip. It is the oldest and most visited National park in the world. That means lots and lots of people in the park. On the other hand, there are good reasons for this high amount of visitors.

Yellowstone is nothing less than a supervolcano! Not a single cone-shaped volcano, but an enormous volcanic system that lies beneath the park. This vast, underground caldera was created by a massive eruption and contains a large magma chamber. The geysers and hot springs seen on the surface are visible signs of this immense, active volcanic activity occurring below. 

The most important attraction is Old Faithful geyser. While not erupting in a perfectly predictable, continuous cycle for its entire history, it became known for its reliability and was formally named during a scientific expedition in 1870, with its regular, predictable pattern of eruptions earning its name. 

I found old faithful cool, but definitely not the coolest in the park. Everywhere you go, you can be surprised with the smell of sulfur (H2S) rising from the deep and being produced by sulfur-reducing bacteria.

Mammoth Hot Springs is made of travertine, a rock formed from the deposition of calcium carbonate. Hot water, containing dissolved calcium carbonate from the underlying limestone bedrock, rises to the surface. At the surface, the water cools, degasses carbon dioxide, and deposits the calcium carbonate, creating the distinctive travertine terraces. 

But the prettiest geothermal feature in my experience, is the Grand Prismatic Spring:

Known for its truly insane colors, it is such an unusual sight.
These vivid colors in the spring are the result of bacterial mats around the edges of the mineral-rich spring water. The mats produce colors ranging from green to red; the amount of color in the microbial mats depends on the ratio of chlorophyll to carotenoids and on the temperature gradient in the runoff. The deep blue color of the water in the center of the pool results from the intrinsic blue color of water (deepest in the center).

In order to get good lighting conditions, we visited it multiple times. At one time we were truly lucky by having both thunder clouds as well as evening sunlight on the spring:

Sadly it is strictly forbidden to fly drones in Yellowstone, as well as all other National parks. So I will show you some imagery from the ground, showing some details of the grand prismatic spring.

The craziest thing I saw were prints left by a grizzly bear chasing a bison through grand prismatic. The event itself we missed, but the markings were still clear in the hot water:

Geysers and hot springs were cool, but we had chosen to visit Yellowstone also for its wildlife.

Yellowstone is primarily a taiga/boreal forest, characterized by its coniferous trees like lodgepole pine, spruce, and fir, adapted to long, cold winters and short, cool summers. While the dominant biome is taiga, Yellowstone's large size and high elevation also mean its ecosystem includes aspects of other biomes, such as northern temperate coniferous forests, and alpine meadows. In winter, temperatures are usually below zero, often going to -20°C or even colder (record is -54°C). But I gladly refer to my buddy Yves Adams his winter work there.

On a few locations, Yellowstone can show you Petrified trees.

Yellowstone's petrified trees were created by a series of massive volcanic eruptions about 50 million years ago. During these events, ancient redwood forests were rapidly buried by volcanic mud and ash. The sudden burial prevented the trees from decaying. Over time, mineral-rich groundwater, particularly silica from the volcanic debris, seeped into the buried wood. The minerals gradually replaced the organic material of the trees, turning them into stone while perfectly preserving their structure. This process repeated over thousands of years, creating layers of petrified forests, which are now exposed by erosion.

August in a taiga is usually not the best month for birding, but we did see some enigmatic species:

Yellowstone is a mammal paradise: Black and grizzly bears, American bison, Elk, Pronghorn, Moose and even rare stuff like Wolverine, Bobcat, Canadian Lynx and Mountain lion all inhabit the park.

The most famous -or in the eyes of many- infamous species is of course the Gray Wolf.
When wolves were eliminated from Yellowstone National Park in the 1920s, the ecosystem suffered. The absence of this key predator led to an overpopulation of elk, which heavily grazed on trees and plants along riverbanks. This caused a domino effect: beaver populations declined, riverbanks eroded, and the overall health of the ecosystem was diminished.
In 1995 and 1996, 31 Canadian gray wolves were reintroduced to the park. This reintroduction is considered a major conservation success. The wolves helped control the elk population, which allowed vegetation like willow and aspen trees to recover. This, in turn, stabilized riverbanks and provided new habitats for beavers and other wildlife, restoring the balance and biodiversity of the entire ecosystem.

It is not difficult to see wolves in Yellowstone, hundreds of wolf watchers stand on viewpoints each morning and evening. It is difficult to see them close though. We saw both the Wapiti and the Lamar Pack. Yellowstone wolf packs typically range in size, but the average is around 10 to 12 individuals.

The USA has more black wolves than Europe because the gene for a black coat originated in domestic dogs and was passed to wild wolves through interbreeding in North America.
This gene provides a survival advantage because it is linked to a stronger immune system, particularly against diseases like canine distemper. This has allowed black wolves to thrive and become much more common in North America, while the gene is very rare in European wolf populations.

Lots of sightings of carnivores in yellowstone happen when Bison die, with the carrion attracting wolves and grizzlies.

Bears are not rare in Yellowstone: Black bears in the forest and grizzlies in the open areas. Bear spray is needed when walking around and many trails are shut because of Grizzly presence.
Because black bears don't occur in the Open areas, you usually only catch a glimpse, or see one swiftly crossing the road. To close for big lenses anyway

We saw almost ten grizzlies in four days, but most were in the scope, at distance. On one occasion, I got lucky with a bear that was approaching.

But the stars of a Yellowstone visit in August are without a doubt the American buffalo, because it is their rutting season. And O boy do they get horny...

Bison are an iconic and crucial species in Yellowstone, representing the last continuously free-roaming, genetically pure herd in the United States. Their story is one of near-extinction, conservation, and ongoing management challenges. This, is a good book to read about buffalo.

The park's managers launched one of the first successful wildlife recovery efforts, purchasing additional captive bison and protecting the remaining wild animals. This effort allowed the population to grow, and today, the Yellowstone herd fluctuates between 4,000 and 6,000 bison, making it the largest on public land.

Bison are considered "ecosystem engineers" because of their significant impact on the landscape. Their grazing patterns create a mosaic of habitats, and their wallowing behavior (rolling in the dirt) creates depressions that collect water for other animals. Their dung enriches the soil, and their presence provides a vital food source for predators like wolves and grizzly bears, as well as scavengers.

Cheers
Karl