America the Beautiful

I love National Parks. Love love love them. So I was so thrilled when I found out I got into not just one, but two different teacher workshops in National Parks this summer!! The workshops were just a few days apart, so I planned a little road trip for myself. Not only would I get to spend time in Yellowstone and Glacier, but I was also going to do a short trip to Grand Teton National Park.

Weirdly, flights from California always seem to land in Montana at around midnight. So I stayed in Bozeman the first night and drove down through Idaho the next morning to get to the Tetons.




GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK

The Tetons are a cool mountain range, with some really interesting geology. The range itself was formed when tectonic movements forced the eastern plate down under the Teton plate. The Tetons got pushed upwards to form mountains - called a fault block mountain range.

This is significant, because it means there is a steep eastern-facing slope (the side we see from the valley), there are no foothills (so the mountains rise up suddenly from the flat valley floor), and you can actually see fault scarps (cliffs or steep slopes) on the mountainside. This gives the most amazing views of snow-capped mountains while driving through the valley of Jackson Hole.

I only had a two half-days to see all of the park, but it meant I could drive through almost all of it and go on a couple very short walks. On the first day, I did the loop from Moose through Moran Junction. Stopped to see the Chapel of the Transfiguration, Menor's Ferry, Jenny Lake, and drove up to Signal Hill. It was a gorgeous day, and the wildflowers were in full bloom.

It was like a superbloom, but they have them every year!!

The view from Signal Hill

LSR Preserve Center - the tiny parking lot keeps visitors to a minimum, but
it's worth the wait. The Preserve is meant to help provide an opportunity for 
solitude and reflection while connecting with nature.

The next day, on my way to Yellowstone, I drove up the Moose-Wilson Road and stopped at the Laurance S Rockefeller Preserve. I had no idea the Rockefellers had such an impact on the creation of this National Park - in the 1920s and 30s, the businessmen and ranchers in Jackson Hole had a really Ron Swanson view of the government and thought they'd be loosing their freedom if a park was established. John D. Rockefeller came and visited in the 1920s and fell in love with the area - so he created a company to buy private lands from landowners who otherwise would never have sold to Rockefeller. He then donated the 35,000 acres of land to the National Park Service for the creation of Jackson Hole National Monument, much to the dismay of locals. They tried to have the monument abolished, but by the end of WWII, when local citizens started realizing that tourism was bringing in a lot of money, their attitudes changed. in 1950, Grand Teton National Park was created.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

I continued the drive north up into Yellowstone, going the Eastern route (by Yellowstone Lake) to avoid the traffic around Old Faithful. Stopped first at Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone before making my way to Gardiner to check into the Yellowstone Forever Overlook Field Campus. It's up on a hill with an amazing view of the North Entrance as well as the junction of the Gardiner and Yellowstone Rivers. It was the night before the seminar started, and there were only three of us there - Candace from Arkansas and Jill from Ohio.

The day before the seminar, I went into the park to see what I could see. There is always a ton of traffic because of road closures, but I made it to the Norris Geyser Basin, Firehole Lake Drive, and Artist's Paintpots to see some geothermal features.

The mud pots and fumaroles at Artist's Paintpots

Throughout the trip, of course I saw plenty of wildlife...

Like this bachelor herd of bighorn sheep...









And the ladies, looking out over their domain...

I even saw my first ever badger! These animals are quite shy...

I SAID NO PICTURES! GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!!

There were lots and lots of marmots...


And in a strange turn of events, saw a coyote being chased off by a pronghorn. His buddies were howling... in laughter??


There was amazing wildlife viewing from our cabin - on several separate occasions, we had elk, bighorn sheep, horses, and marmots in the field right outside our kitchen window.

One day, from the spotting scope, we even saw a rare white elk! Since it had patches of color, it most like isn't a true albino - it probably has leucism (loss of pigmentation).  At first, we were amazed that she survived given her stark color contrast, but then thinking about it, she's so much better hidden in the winter...!

What? Am I not good enough for ya?!

There were plenty of ungulates (hoofed mammals), like pronghorn, mule deer, white-tail deer, and elk. But no moose. sigh. someday...!



















The Yellowstone STEAM Teacher Workshop was a four day course that gave us tips and ideas to blend art into STEM curriculum. We got lots of time to work on our own projects, both in the studio and out in the field. The best part is that you don't have to be a great artist in order to create great art - you just have to learn how to be a good observer and not be afraid get pen or pencil to paper. Since we were only given 10-15 minutes to do our sketches, we didn't have time to get bogged down in details or try to make things look perfect.

On one day, we went to Mammoth Hot Springs and tested the water for pH, temperature, and cyanobacteria. With a pH of 8-9 and a temperature of around 100.2°, the Grassy Spring pool we were testing probably had Oscillatoria as its microbe. We learned about Yellowstone's different thermal features (hot springs, geysers, fumaroles, and mud pots), and how you need 5 ingredients (P2HEW - Plumbing, Preservation, Heat, Earthquakes, and Water) in order for them to exist. We discussed how the travertine terraces were formed from water and limestone (and how they're so dynamic, moving and shifting so that trees are killed and boardwalks have to be reconstructed).

Sharing my Paint Color Acrostic

Another fun activity was the paint palette acrostic - we were given paint swatches and had to find something in nature that matched one of the paint colors. With the name of that color, we wrote an acrostic poem.

Watercolor session at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Finding what we can find, on the forest floor...

One of the most enjoyable (and surprisingly relaxing) experiences was sitting out in the field and drawing what we observed. We got to do it a few times and I found that it really made me notice things that I otherwise wouldn't.




Observing in nature isn't just seeing the big picture, but getting down and close to see things like individual leaves, bugs, and sometimes even looking through a microscope.

We got to test out several different cellphone microscopes (and figured out that the more expensive ones definitely are NOT the best ones!!)








At the end of the workshop, we had a fun little art show to display all the work that we'd done that week.



There was a small handful of us that decided to stay one last night, so after a leisurely lunch, Amy, Candace, Marge, and I drove back into the park for some hiking and sketching. We went back to Norris Geyser Basin (where I'd already stopped on the way in, but you can't get enough of that place, I say!) Since I had seen Vixen Geyser erupt a few days before, I figured it was one that erupted fairly often. So we stood in front of it for a while, and sure enough, the water level kept creeping upwards until we actually watched it erupting! We also spent the time sitting at Echinus Geyser, attempting to use watercolors to capture the strange colors.

Echinus Geyser, in photo and watercolor.

The erupting Vixen Geyser

The next morning, after a lovely breakfast with my new friends, I left Yellowstone and drove up to Great Falls, Montana. I stopped at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center for a quick visit (and learned a ton about Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's expedition through the western half of what is now the US in 1804-6. President Thomas Jefferson wanted to map out the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, and Lewis and Clark sought a route to the Pacific Ocean to stake American claim before the Europeans got to it. It's crazy to think they set off into the unknown, with none of the modern conveniences and no idea what they'd find. Imagine meeting a grizzly for the first time, or cresting the continental divide, or portaging over Great Falls. Then, when you actually reach the Pacific Ocean, you've gotta turn around and trek back home again. Oof.

View of the jump from the Visitor's Center

Just outside of Great Falls, I stopped to see the First People's Buffalo Jump in the little town of Ulm. There are records that say this is the biggest jump in the world, as well as the world's most used jump. And it was really an intriguing place.

From the base of the jump

There's evidence that the site was up to 5,000 years old, but it didn't really start being a popular site until around 900CE. Without access to horses back then, Native Americans would drive herds of bison off these cliffs as a safer way to kill large numbers of animals. They would then use the hides, meat, and bones to make the shelter, clothing, tools, and weapons that they needed for the year.

From the top of the jump

Definitely impressive seeing the site, and fascinating to think about trying to drive herds of buffalo down off the cliffs. It really gave an insight to how the Native Americans used the landscape and the natural resources to survive, but did it in a sustainable, environmentally responsible way.