Young Scientist Project

 

Using the Laser thermometer - which someone asked if it was a scat identifier.....tourists

Sick, with 'Bob Dylan Voice'

This weekend, we had awesome plans to go camping and horseback riding in the north part of the park. We were also going to hike specimen ridge, where they have petrified trees. All our plans came crashing down when I went home sick from my Friday :(

We made the best of our weekend though, on our Saturday I did feel better, so we went on a ranger walk through the upper basin, did our research project and earned our "Young Scientist" badge, and we went to some other evening programs.

Our project for our "Young Scientist" badge was: Is bacteria color and temperature universal in hot springs of the upper geyser basin? we got a backpack filled with sciency toys including a holster with the laser thermometer. we walked around and took the temperatures of white, yellow, orange, green and brown bacteria living in the hot springs. Later I geeked out with excel crunching numbers and making graphs. keep in mind, this badge is for ages 14 and up. The instructions were in comic form.

We found that the temperatures vary a lot with similar colors of bacteria, however, the bacteria colors always grow in the same order from hottest to coldest thermophile. Badge, Earned.... now for the Junior Ranger Badge :D

One lady approached us when we were taking temps of the springs and asked if my thermometer was a "scat identifier". Unfortunately I dont think she was joking, or that such device exists... but it doesn't  take a genius to know that All the poop in the upper geyser basin is BISON! 

pictures to come later!

So, since I was raspy, I decided to try and learn a Bob Dylan song on the ukelele. Roman thought it was very entertaining! I kept coughing like a smoker in the middle of the verses too.... if only I could play the harmonica too....

Pow wow

Last weekend we joined couple other employees and went to the Cody, Wyoming. As I heard it is a cowboy city with rodeo every single night, but we did not go there because of that. We went there to see a Pow wow. It was really interesting to see all those native Indians to wear their traditional "celebrational" clothing. Lots of colors. I noticed that they had some similar foot stepping as our national dances. We had a fry bread, what is a traditional Indian food. Also it reminded me a Langos, Slovak version of fry bread. They taste different but look the same. We bought a dream catcher to  protect us from nightmares, and allow us to have good dreams only. So far it is working for us, we`ll see later. On the way there we saw a black bear hanging out between trees, ironically it was brown. Silly Americans! Then we saw a bison, few elks and on the way back another black\brown bear run across road. This weekend we plan to go camping, hiking and horse back riding. Here are some pictures of pow wow:

 

New Uniforms!

We both got new uniforms this week! I started my volunteering gig with the Rangers, and Roman got promoted from Room Attendant (room cleaner) to Team Leader. Now he is in charge of a group of Room attendants, and making sure they are cleaning meticulously.

Volunteering with the rangers is really fun, I just get dressed up, walk around the geyser basin and answer peoples questions. I haven't got any silly or crazy questions yet. I also change the predicted eruption times on different geysers, and sometimes I pick up garbage. I also tell people to stay on the boardwalk A LOT.

One interesting fact I aquired while out on a rove was from a teenage boy. He walked past me, with his family and said " our tour bus got impounded and we're stuck here." I'd like to hear the rest of that story someday. At least they are stuck in an awesome place.

We also are going to earn our "young scientist" badge by completing this packet about the Scientific Method in the geyser basin. We get to borrow a backpack with an in-fared thermometer and other cool toys to play with! The activity is 14 and up, but I've got connections :D 

Throwing Up Waterfalls

This was the first weekend Roman and I had two days off, at the same time! How Exciting! On Friday we went on an 8 mile hike to Ferry Falls and Twin Buttes. It was a great flat hike past Grand Prismatic spring, through a new growth of woods to a 197 foot waterfall. We saw a marmot chasing a chipmunk, I think they were playing tag, and a very curious squirrel. We find  some strange things to talk about while hiking.... since talking and being loud keeps the bears away.

After a snack break at Ferry Falls we continued to two woodland geysers; Spray and Imperial. There was an amazing orange river connecting the two features, you could feel the heat rising from the running waters.

Then, because our book told us it was O.K. , we went off trail and blazed up North Twin Butte. It was steep, and windy, but we made it. We figured that if Buffalo can do it, we can too. There were some buffalo prints on the way up, as well as a lone Bison, mulling on grass in the valley of the Twin Buttes. Our elevation at the summit was 7,875 feet, a 650 foot gain.

In the picture above, you should be able to find the following: Imperial Geyser, Spray Geyser, Romanko, a Lone Buffalo, Grand Prismatic, and the Firehole river. Possibly the Absaroka Mountains. 

In the evening we went to dinner, and the nightly ranger program as usual. The employee pub also hosted a "super hero party". we made an appearance wearing Spiderman and The Avengers gear, but it was lame- so we went to bed. The only person I saw dressed up at all was our friend Jude, who was "Guitar Hero" he had a pocket amp, looked like a metal rocker and was sporting a British accent and horribly gelled hair.

Saturday, we drove up to Mount Washburn, near Canyon. It had a fresh layer of snow on top of its piles of unmelted winter snow. We hiked about a mile up just to get a good look around, then headed down to do some Canyon Exploring. We hiked the South Rim, Artists point, and then headed to the North rim, Inspiration Point and Brink of Lower falls. It was a lot of up and down. We totaled 10.5 miles for the day.Oh, also it snowed on our way home, and into the evening... on June 9th.. CA RAZY!

Right place, right time

This day adventure lead us to hike to the Loan Star Geyser. It was a nice hike, two hours round trip. As we were walking a couple of people were going down the path and told us that we are late. Well, we planed to stay there, by the geyser and have some food, picnic style. So we were not late. We enjoyed the surrounding nature and food too. Later an older lady showed up and her first question was if the water bubbling from the geyser was toxic. I guess she saw as touching it, because we wanted to know how hot it is. And no, the water is not toxic. The actual  eruption was really nice, and noisy too. Totally worth of the two hours long waiting.