Jersey City to Seattle Roadtrip
Day 5 – Thursday, October 5

The fourth day we continued on through the rest of South Dakota and into Wyoming. In the early evening we arrived at the eastern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is the first and oldest national park not only in the US but in the world and covers 3,470 square miles (8,980 km²). Yellowstone was the site of three major volcanic eruption events in the last 2.2 million years with the last event occurring approximately 640,000 years ago, which are the largest known to have occurred on Earth in that period and drastically affected the global climate. The eruptions formed Yellowstone Caldera, 43 miles by 18 miles (70 km by 30 km), atop a huge magma chamber. Preserved within Yellowstone are many geothermal features, including and some 10,000 hot springs and geysers (more than half of the planet's known total). The superheated water that sustains these features also sustains life - the bright colors in the spring are created by mats of bacteria growing in the warm, mineral rich water. The park is widely considered to be the finest mega-fauna wildlife habitat in the continental US and among others is home to grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of herds of American bison and elk. There are at least 600 species of trees and plants found in the park, some of which are found nowhere else.

We spent the night in the park and stayed at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. Because the needs of animals should be given priority over the needs of humans in a place like this, we drove very carefully from the eastern park entrance to the hotel as evening twilight gave way to a dark night. On the way we saw a lonely bison grazing by the side of the road, and later on we had to stop in order to let a small herd of elk run across the road. People who live in the cities can often forget how wild nature can be! On the way from the parking lot to the hotel entrance, a distance of barely a few hundred feet, all three of us were surprised by a very sudden and loud elk call and followed by a beat of hooves a few steps away – for a split second we caught a glimpse of a silhouette of a majestic bull-elk with large antlers and then he disappeared into the night! I especially liked the fact that all park accommodations are non-smoking and reflect the natural surroundings of Yellowstone, i.e. televisions, radios, air conditioning, and Internet hook-ups are not available! It was wonderful to be lost to civilization (no cell phones either!) and fall asleep while hearing elk calls and wolves’ howling in the distance.