The Taelemans´ Blog

Lets fast forward a bit, I still have a ton of photos of Yellowstone, but things might get a bit boring if I continue with them, so let’s move on to…
Jackson, Wyoming, is a small town located in the Jackson Hole valley located south of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park. In the last couple of years, the town has gone from an actual cowboy town to an upper class ski resort, which results in a combination of great western stores and sushi bars.
For superb boots and an excellent service, visit Stone’s Mercentile. They have an enormous collection of boots and hats. I bought a pair of Nocona boots in their shop and they are just great. Proudly made in Texas, YIHA!

Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, Jackson,WY | Location on Map

The bar in the picture, called the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, was founded in the late 1890’s and tries to keep the cowboy history of Jackson alive with live western music and it’s authentic looks.

PS: Apparently, Jackson is home to the world’s largest ball of barbed wire… What famous game does this remind you of?

Yellowstone National Park, named after the Yellowstone River which flows through the park, is the first National Park of the United States, founded in 1872. The park is known for its wildlife and geothermal features as seen on the pictures in this post. The geothermal features of the park are caused by the Yellowstone Caldera, which is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a “supervolcano” because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions.

Chinese Spring, Yellowstone N.P. | Location on map

The current caldera was created by an enormous eruption that occurred 640.000 years ago. This eruption was about 1000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. The predicted effects of a Yellowstone eruption are the coverage of North America with ash followed by several years of freezing weather for the whole world. Combine this with the fact that Yellowstone Park has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years… well… invest in winter clothing and spam

Upper Basin Spring,Yellowstone N.P. | Location on map

Yellowstone is in my opinion one of the most beautiful places in the world. The landscape is truly amazing and its features like geysers, basins, hot springs,… are unique in the world, which I’ll try to show you in more posts about Yellowstone.

Of course (since we have a photo addict among us) we are far from finished with our pictures from our trip to Canada and the US, so here are a few more.

The pictures in this post show Cave and Basin National Historic Site of Canada. It commemorates the birthplace of Canada’s National Park system, which began here in 1885. Naturally occurring, warm mineral springs can be found inside the cave, and outside in an emerald coloured basin.

Banff Cave and Basin | Location on Map

Actually we had planned to go to Banff Upper Hot Springs, but since we didn’t had the time to sit in a hot spring and relax for a while (we made that up in Vegas, so don’t worry, more about that soon) we visited the Cave and Basin.

Tourists flocked to Banff in the early 19th century to restore themselves in the natural hot springs
waters at the Cave and Basin site. Nowadays it’s not allowed anymore, to use the springs as a swimming pool. People don’t really mind because they can go to the Upper Hot Springs.

Banff Cave and Basin | Location on Map

Like I said, it’s breathtaking, but not only in the positive sense of the word. Inhaling the smell of the sulphur vapours, is really disgusting. Boy, was I happy to leave this historic site… (I had to inhale the smell again while visiting Yellowstone National Park, but it wasn’t that bad, the black and grizzly bears made it all worth it:) ).

Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres between 48th and 51st Streets in New York City. The centerpiece of the Rockefeller Center is the Rockefeller plaza with the bronze statue of the Greek legendary titan Prometheus, bringing fire to mankind. During winter, the Rockefeller Plaza hosts an ice skating ring as you can see in the picture.

Rockefeller plaza | Location on map

In the picture you see the famous GE building (872 foot - 266 m) which was the setting for the famous photograph by Charles C. Ebbets in 1932 of workers having lunch on a steel beam without safety harnesses.

The Flatiron Building, which when constructed was called the Fuller Building, was one of the tallest buildings in New York City upon its completion in 1902. The building is located on a triangular island block at 23rd Street, Fifth Avenue, and Broadway, on the south end of Madison Square. It received its name because it is shaped like a clothes iron.

Flatiron Building | Location on map

St. Patrick’s Cathedral is a Catholic cathedral in New York, right across the street from Rockefeller Center. The land on which the cathedral stands was bought in 1813 by Dom Augustin Lestrange, abbot of a community of Trappists from the original monastery of La Trappe, which now brews the only non-Belgian Trappist beer (and the only one I haven’t tasted yet…).

The cornerstone of the cathedral was laid on August 15, 1858, just south of the orphanage founded by the Trappist monks and later further maintained by the Diocese of New York. Currently, it is the seat of the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral | Location on map

PS: If you want to see the strangest case of perspective, take a look at the map location of the picture.

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States and stretches 1825 m over the East River connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn. Since its opening, it has become an iconic part of the New York skyline.

The pedestrian walkway which lies in the center of the bridge and higher than the automobile lanes, permits the passage of pedestrians across the bridge. From the Brooklyn side of the bridge, you get a fantastic overview over the skyline of New York, as you can see in the picture.

In 2006, a Cold War era bunker was found by city workers near the East River shoreline of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The bunker, hidden within one of the masonry towers, still contains the emergency supplies that were being stored for a potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.

Brooklyn Bridge | Location on map

The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant and Market is a chain of seafood restaurants inspired by the 1994 film Forrest Gump. It was launched in 1996 by Viacom Consumer Products (which also owns Paramount Pictures) and is the first theme restaurant inspired by a film.
I’ve never actually went to eat there but by taking a look at their menu, I think this would be heaven for Ine as she is a shrimp freak, she orders shrimp about 75 percent of the time when we visit a restaurant.

Bubba Gump

Let’s do a small jump of about 4500 kilometers (2800 miles) form San Francisco to New York. While having to wait 12 hours for a connecting flight to Brussels, we decided to make a quick visit to the Big Apple.

I spotted this photographer while during our morning stroll in Central Park. I learned from Ron Niebrugge that the camera he is using is a 4×5 large format camera which apparently is still very popular with landscape photographers. It is not as impressive as the one he encountered during his photo shoots though, which you can see in this post on his blog.

Central Park, New York

An interesting fact about New York is that during the last glacier period (30.000 - 10.000 years ago), New York was fully covered by glaciers. The grooves left by these glaciers can be easily observed in the rocks still present at Central Park (as you can see in the picture). These glaciers also contributed to the current skyline of New York. Large amounts of soil, stone, and other debris were scraped up by the expanding glaciers were deposited where the ice front retreated. Therefore, buildings can be a lot higher on those places. This is why Manhattan has areas with very large skyscrapers and other spots with smaller buildings.

This picture of the bell of an SFFD fire truck was taken in one of the 48 fire stations the city has. The SFFD was formed in 1850 and the largest disaster in which the fire department was involved was the 1906 earthquake. The department found itself reduced to fighting the fires of the quake aftermath with axes and shovels, as most of the city’s water mains were broken.

SFFD Fire Truck Bell

A few weeks after the disaster, Chicago-based photographer George Lawrence saw an opportunity to capture a unique image of the sprawling ruins using his “captive airship,” a hand-built, 49-pound panoramic camera suspended from a series of kites. Lawrence’s foresight earned him a small fortune of $15,000 (more than $300,000 today) selling copies of his achievement. Click the picture to see the enormous detail of the image.

San Francisco in Ruins by George Lawrence