Yellowstone National Park

The first national park in the world, Yellowstone National Park, is located in Wyoming, USA. It is an amazing natural UNESCO site and provides a view into earths past. 

 Yellowstone contains many lakes, mountains and geysers. It actually contains HALF of the world's geothermal features. It is an extremely active volcanic area because it is located on top of the largest volcanic caldera in North America.

 The many geysers are spread throughout the park. Some geysers erupt frequently, some strongly, some weakly. The most famous of them all is Old Faithful, which received its name because it is very consistent in its eruption patterns. It erupts once about every 90 minutes and it generally has the same height--40 m. It is not the tallest one, but it does secrete about 5000 gal of water per eruption. Eruptions usually last 3 minutes and have tourists running to catch a glimpse of it.

 Yellowstone also contains many hot springs that are VERY hot.

 I'm going to geek out on you for a little bit. This is the Grand Prismatic Spring. It has many different colors and is featured in many science books as an example of a hot spring. When trying to find a way to replicate DNA infinitely in a process known as PCR, you may find an interesting complication: when separating the double strand, you need to warm DNAup, but that might also cause the enzymes in charge of replicating DNA to denature (to lose their shape and die pretty much). So scientists had to find a special enzyme called Taq polymerase, which is stable even under high temperatures so they would replicate DNA. The answer to this problem was found in Yellowstone. Bacteria that live in the hot springs have enzymes that are resistant to heat (otherwise the bacteria would not be able to survive). Once the enzymes were isolates, they were able to be used to replicate DNA and help solve crimes, identify people, and do paternity tests. Thank you Yellowstone!

 For a while I did not understand why the place was called Yellowstone. That is, until I got to the Yellowstone Canyon. This place is amazing. It is a canyon that is strikingly yellow due to the high concentrations of sulfur in its rocks. The canyon also has a waterfall and a river running through it. The view is amazing. I can't explain the feeling of being there and the energy that abounds in the park.

 Fauna is abundant and proliferous. There are buffalos, moose, bears, deer, and many other large mammals. There are also many fish and birds that live there.

 The other highlight of my trip was seeing the sunrise in Lake Yellowstone. Lake Yellowstone is one of the highest lakes in North America. Its waters are CLEAR. It has remained so pure because it has been protected for so long. No resorts, cabins, or hotels are around it. It is beautiful and the sunrise was striking. I was definitely not expecting so much beauty and peace. Please go watch the sunrise.