Some Las Vegas pictures from our US/Canada trip in June 2008. I have a new pc and somehow the colors of the pictures seem totally different once I upload them to flickr, I have no idea how they look on another system. I really need a spider to calibrate my monitor… If the picture of The Mirage (the one with the palm tree) looks washed out/Too colorful, please let me know 
The Wave is a sandstone formation on the slopes of the Coyote Buttes in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, located just south of the Utah-Arizona border about halfway between Kanab, Utah and Page, Arizona. The area is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and visiting The Wave is restricted to 20 persons per day. Obtaining a permit has to be done four months in advance and can be done through a lottery system on the website of the Coyote Buttes BLM.
We headed out on the 10km (6 miles) round trip in midst June at a temperature of around 38 degrees Celcius (100F) and the temperature soon got the best of us. The combination of some steep slopes and sand dunes got us strolling from shade to shade, as far as we could locate any as there is not much cover available on the trail. During the hike, The Wave is nowhere to be seen until the very last moment, which is of course preceded by a very steep, very sandy slope…
Once at The Wave, the views are amazing. The sculpted sandstone really looks like a large wave has suddenly been frozen in time and has been converted to sandstone. The area of The Wave is not that large, but still very impressive.
When we hiked back, the sun was already setting which made the hike suddenly seem like a breeze. Well, at least I learned a valuable lesson, never underestimate extreme temperatures…
Back home, I saw a book in the bookstore called “Unforgettable Walks to Take Before You Die” which pictures The Wave on its front cover and I must say, this is certainly one I won’t forget soon.
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!
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?
I’m a bit low on inspiration at the the moment, so I’m just gonna do a quick post with some more pictures from Yellowstone National Park and short descriptions.
The first picture shows a dead tree in Mammoth Hot Springs, killed by the calcium carbonate dissolved in the hot spring water. Mammoth is a large hill of travertine that has been created over thousands of years as hot water from the spring cooled and deposited calcium carbonate. Each day over 2 tons of calcium carbonate flows into Mammoth.
The second picture is taken at Grand Prismatic Spring, which is the largest hot spring in the United States. The vivid colors in the spring are the result of pigmented bacteria that grow around the edges of the mineral-rich water. The bacteria produce colors ranging from green to red.
When water falls as snow or rain on the Yellowstone Plateau , it slowly percolates through layers of porous rock. Sinking to a depth of nearly 3300 meters (10000 feet), it comes in contact with the hot rocks of the magma chamber under the surface. The water is cooked and becomes superheated (200°C or 400°F) while remaining in its liquid state due to the pressure pushing down on it from rocks and water.
Because the superheated water is less dense, it starts its journey back to the surface, where it forms a hot spring when pressure and heat energy which gets released slowly.
While in underground, some of this silica contained in the water deposits on the walls of the underground “plumbing system” forming a pressure-tight seal. This seal locks in the hot water and breaks when the pressure gets high enough, producing a geyser. The most famous geyser in Yellowstone is undoubtedly the Old Faithful and is one of the most predictable geysers, shooting boiling water to a height of 44 to 56 meter more or less every 90 minutes.
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.
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
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.
The Berkeley Pit is a former open pit copper mine located in Butte, Montana, about a mile and a half wide and about 1,780 feet (540 m) deep. Once the pit was closed in 1982, groundwater started to fill the pit to the natural groundwater level. This has presented an environmental problem in that the water allows minerals in the ore and wall rocks to decay, releasing acid and finally resulting in water that is heavily acidic (pH level of 2.5) and loaded with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals (hence the color of the water).
The water contains so much dissolved metal that nowadays they actually mine the water as you can see on the picture below.
Check the map location to get a feeling of how large the pit really is.
PS: If you’re in Butte, go to the Derby Steak House. The steaks they serve are just amazing. Must have been the best steak I ate in my life.
In my opinion, Europe is behind on the US technology wise, but as far as the electricity system goes, the US is pretty outdated. The plugs and sockets for example are hell, providing no stability at all. In most US cities, the utility poles are still made of wood and a lot of main electrical connections between towns use these old wooden poles as their only support. A simple storm could easily cause power outages…
This picture of a utility pole with transformer mess was taken in Butte (No, with an “e” and no it does not originate from…, it’s French for “small hill”) , Montana and these can still be seen everywhere across the country.
Here are some more pictures from Glacier National Park. The first picture shows Swiftcurrent lake and on the left you can see the Many Glacier Hotel. The second picture shows a small island in St Mary Lake with Red Eagle mountain in the back.
I’m sorry for the slow pace of updates recently on the blog, but our lives seem to get rather hectic nowadays as we are in the final stretch of moving to Vancouver, Canada. My employer in Vancouver booked our plane tickets last week and our packing dates are confirmed so we can actually start counting down and hope we’ve got everything covered here in Belgium. I’m really happy that everything in Vancouver gets arranged by my employer so we don’t have to worry too much about that.
The Swiftcurrent trail is an easy trail that starts right next to the Many Glacier Hotel and takes you all the way around the lake, making it perfect for an late afternoon stroll. When we did the trail in mid-June, the trail was still covered with snow at some places and was sometimes still one to two meters thick. The snowfall in this area must be immense… The trail gives you some wonderful views of the Many Glacier Valley as you can see on the following pictures and remember, be bear aware
Yesterday, Jeroen came over... Freddy: Heb ik ook gemerkt, denk eerder dat er iets van lichtstraal de lens moet...
Kris Taeleman | 
