Here and There: SubarUs Ten: Yellowstone National Park

-6°F, an ideal day for snowmobiles!

Raya is our snowmobile guide today in Yellowstone National Park, we are twenty three excited tourists in total.

After everyone understood the rules (something about if you are having fun on the snowmobiles, stop...) and the order we would drive in, we were ready to enter the park.

Although it is winter, and you cannot enter by car, you still have to show your park pass (or buy a week pass).

I would say "whatever the price it is worth it" but I really don't want the price of annual passes to increase. There was talk about the price going up this year but I just checked, it is still $80 for 2018. Thank goodness.

Everyone deserves a little wilderness in their lives...

The majority of this elk's friends and family have migrated north for the winter, but he seems pretty content hanging out at home.

Raya Steele at Three Bears Lodge- you can't go wrong!

This is Raya's twelth year as a winter guide in the park.

It isn't realistic to stop for every bison nor every herd, but this is our first one so far, and a pretty large group very close to the road at that.

Oh, don't look so sad that your breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next few months is limp grass.

While we were safely observing bison from the bridge a snowmobile group in front of us was surprised by a bull that came from the bank of the river that no one was paying much attention to. This may be a good time to say that bison cause more deaths in the park than any other animal.

You can see that their guide does not look too happy about the fairly dangerous situation.

We are officially inside the caldera! Which would seem like a safe place to be if it weren't an active supervolcano sitting directly on a hotspot.

It would probably be nicer not to think about this image, but it seems like everywhere you go there is a supervolcano reminder. So, all you can do is believe in the prediction that the next eruption won't be for one or two millions years.

Marla, you are missed!

That is Raya's vehicle in front of us.

Eric drove me around, giving me plenty of opportunities to take pictures, with just a moderate risk of frost bite (I had to take off all of my gloves and liners for each shot).

Guess who! For the first time this season Josh and Raya were at Old Faithful at the same time.

Perfect timing for a group picture.

Old Faithful is our furthest destination point on the snowmobile tour. It erupts every 35 to 120 minutes and we were a little slow getting here (a result of our large group, and talk about the broken femurs and clavicles as a result of too much fun) so we watched it just once today. With a height range of 90 to 184 feet, "it is not the biggest or the most regular geyser in Yellowstone but it is the biggest regular geyser."

Raya has been on snowmobile duty, but she often drives these Bombardier snowcoaches, originally built in 1953.

A snowmobile tour to Old Faithful means there are lots of stops with walks to other geysers. There were several that were new to me. This is only my second trip over winter, maybe my fifth time overall, but even if it were my thousandth time like Raya, according to her, it never looks the same. The geography is always morphing.

Although animals can't always be seen, you know they are somewhere just out of sight.

This trumpeter swan wedge (a wedge is a group of flying swans) emerged from the steam of a geyser.

Kind of like this.

Taking pictures in Yellowstone in winter is tricky, there is no consistency with the location of the vapor, and what is revealed behind the temporary screen.

The white on these trees is evidence of petrification.

Shhhh... listen...

It was difficult to pick out pictures of the red mud pots, there were too many that perfectly captured the geothermal violence that is Yellowstone.

It is mesmerizing.

As we passed Madison Junction there was a snowmobile on its side, and Raya was the first guide on the scene. By the time that their guide realized, they were ready to heave-ho.

Hopefully they paid extra for the insurance.

An overturned snowmobile can happen to the best of us...

Typically after a group witnesses an accident (it is one thing to just hear about them), guests tend to drive slower than is necessary. Today was no different.