Day 4 Grand Teton National Park

This morning we woke up in Steamboat Springs and watched a movie about Yellowstone National Park. I didn't know that the park is actually in three different states: Montana (3%), Idaho (1%) and Wyoming (96%). Yellowstone couldn't be handled by the states, especially since there was more than one. The park was turned over to the federal government, and it was made into a National Park in 1872.  The army actually ran the park from 1874 to 1918 because the National Park Service wasn't created until 1916, which I thought was very interesting.
Yellowstone has many beautiful attributes, including Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone Lake, and Lamar Valley. Early explorers described the area as an underworld with pits of bubbling mid and bizarre rock formations. Yellowstone is situated on top of a vast caldera and the largest super volcano on the continent, which creates the thermal features within the park. I thought it was cool how you could tell the temperature of the water in certain ponds by the color of the algae that lived in that area. The red algae lived in the hottest spots, and the green algae lived in the colder spots.
We also talked about the impacts of wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone. It was fascinating to me that the wolves even had an impact on the birds in the area. Without so many elk around to eat everything, foraging patterns have changed and the aspen community is doing well. Beaver colonies are also growing, and the birds and bears are eating wolf kill leftovers. This raises the question, will bears follow wolf packs? I believe that eventually that is a strong possibility.
I learned that the park has the largest number of wildlife per square mile, it has the highest altitude lake, and with 1000-3000 earthquakes per year it is one of the most monitored places in the world. Yellowstone National Park truly is a unique and special place, and I really enjoyed learning all about it in this video.
After Steamboat Springs, we drove to Jackson Hole. It was one of the best driving memories for me. I really loved driving the vans, and this drive was especially enjoyable. The grass was swaying in the wind, and it looked like a painting. Closer to Jackson Hole, everything was so perfect and green it didn't even look real. Once we arrived in Jackson Hole, we went to a really nice grocery store and we all ran out to the parking lot in the rain. Then we drove to our campsite in Grand Teton National Park. We met some cool geology field camp people at the campsite next to us. We cooked hot dogs over the fire and it was awesome. Tait, Billy, and Katie J went for a run and found a cool hike for us to do in the morning.