August 11-13, 2023 - Thermopolis, WY

Friday, Nancy got her hair cut in the morning and after lunch we went to Hot Springs State Park and walked the Rainbow Terraces Boardwalk.  The boardwalk goes across and around the hot springs.  We walked across the swinging bridge – and yes it did swing and move as you walked across.  The bridge was built in 1916 to provide access to Hopewell Hospital and Pleasant View Sanitarium.  In the 1980’s it was determined to be unsafe and closed.  Thanks to the support from local organizations and individuals it was restored in 1992.  The towers are from the original construction.




The view of the hot springs and Big Horn River from across the bridge was beautiful.








Rex and Tacky going back across the swinging bridge – Tacky did not like walking across the bridge.






The terraces are created as the water cools leaving behind lime and gypsum.  The water temperature is usually 1270 F at the Big Spring.







There are at least 27 different minerals in the water.  The colors are due mainly to algae that grow in the warm water.




The Tepee fountain was built in 1909 to vent steam from hot mineral water that was piped throughout the park.  As water flows over the structure, it cools and deposits layers of travertine.  The different colors on the fountain are various types of algae that grow in the hot mineral water.

We had a very enjoyable walk around the park and especially liked the shady areas as it was very warm this afternoon.

Saturday, we decided to take a day off and relax.  Rex went fishing along the Big Horn River in the afternoon.  He is not having very good luck fishing in Wyoming as he hasn’t caught anything yet.  Sunday, we started getting the motorhome ready as we are leaving Thermopolis Monday morning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 4-6, 2009

Image
June 4, 2009 We drove Northwest of Jasper along the Yellowhead Highway to Mount Robson Provincial Park. We saw a moose along the river in the distance but wasn’t close enough to get a picture. We saw Yellowhead Lake and Moose Lake, and had a picnic lunch at the Mt. Robson Visitors Center. The scenery is spectacular – a picture of Mt. Robson. Our site at Whistler campground. June 5 We left Jasper in the sunshine and warm but the further North we got, the colder, rainier and more grey it got. As we turned north on route 40 to Grand Paririe, we started to hit a little snow. Didn’t last long but really woke us up. It stayed rainy and grey until we got to Grand Cache then it started to clear. We also got our first real windshield chip today, but a trip to WalMart and a windshield repair kit later we were fixed. The land here is somewhat hilly, swampy and covered with trees. There are some really big oil and gas complexes and some large lumber mills such as the one we saw in Grand Paririe.
Read more

August 24-26, 2009

Image
We headed towards Flathead Lake Monday morning and stopped in Kalispell to get our air conditioner repaired. It had stopped working a couple of weeks ago and August is not the time to be without an air conditioner. The RV dealer we stopped at gave us the name of the guy who does their air conditioning work. He was able to fix the air conditioner (a switch had burned out) in a couple of hours and we were on our way. We drove to Polson, MT at the south end of Flathead Lake and are going to stay here for a few days. We are staying at Eagle Nest RV, which has a cherry orchard on one side, a golf course on one side and a horse pasture on another side. It is a really nice park with lots of grass and trees. Unfortunately, we are at the end of the cherry season and we might not be able to find any fresh cherries. Tuesday morning we decided to take a drive around Flathead Lake. This is a very scenic area with lots of fruit orchards. We found a fruit stand and bought cherries, peaches, tomatoes
Read more

July 28, 2009

Image
We left Valdez this morning in rain and fog and retraced our route back up the Richardson Highway. We ran out of the fog and rain after we went over Thompson Pass and thought we would be able to see more of the scenery. Not to be, shortly we ran into more smoke. We stopped at the visitor center at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park but it was really smoky so we didn’t stay very long. The ranger there (we think he was a ranger but he looked about 15 years old!) told us that there are currently 60 fires in Alaska and the smoke here is from the fires North of here around Fairbanks. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the largest national park in the US at 13.2 million acres. There are only 2 short gravel roads in the park so access is limited to backpacking, hiking and flight seeing. The park is mainly wilderness and has 4 major mountain ranges in it and includes 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the US. Unfortunately, because of the smoke we were not able to see any of them. We turned off the R
Read more