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In the summer of 1966, a microbiologist named Thomas Brock was standing at the edge

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of a hot spring in Yellowstone, looking at something most people walk right past.

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Color.

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Thin streaks of pink and orange and yellow, growing in water hot enough to scald

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your hand.

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Working with an undergraduate named Hudson Freeze, he took a sample from a spot

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called Mushroom Spring, in water around a hundred fifty-six degrees.

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Inside it was a bacterium nobody had described before.

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They named it Thermus aquaticus.

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Hold on to that name.

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Because about twenty years later, an enzyme from that one little microbe made a lab

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technique called PCR work.

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PCR copies DNA.

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It's used in medicine, in crime labs, and in the COVID tests that millions of people

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took.

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The man who invented it, Kary Mullis, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993.

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If you've ever had one of those tests, a little piece of Yellowstone was in it.

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Welcome to Talk Travel with Glen.

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I'm Glen, and this is the start of Season Three.

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This season we're traveling through America's national parks, one park at a time,

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and we're going for the stories underneath the scenery.

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The history, the science, and the things most visitors never hear about.

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It made sense to start where the whole idea started.

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The first national park in the world.

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Yellowstone.

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Picture the steam first.

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It rolls off a huge pool of water and drifts low across the ground like fog that

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forgot to lift.

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That's Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in Yellowstone.

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It's anywhere from two hundred to three hundred thirty feet across, and more than a

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hundred twenty feet deep.

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The colors around the edge are the first thing everyone notices, and almost everyone

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guesses wrong about them.

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They aren't paint, and they aren't minerals.

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They're alive.

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Trillions of tiny organisms called thermophiles, which means heat lovers, grow in

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mats around the rim.

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The palest ones live where the water is hottest.

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As the water cools on its way out, orange, brown and green take over.

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So when you're looking at that rainbow, you're really looking at a temperature map,

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drawn by living things.

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And Grand Prismatic isn't alone.

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Yellowstone has more than ten thousand hydrothermal features, and more than five

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hundred of them are geysers.

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No place on Earth has more.

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It has hot springs, geysers, mudpots, travertine terraces and steam vents called

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fumaroles.

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Most places with geothermal activity have one or two of those.

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Yellowstone has all five.

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That raises a fair question.

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If a hot spring and a geyser both sit on the same hot ground, why does one just

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steam and the other blow water into the sky?

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The answer is plumbing.

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A hot spring's channels are open.

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Hot water rises, cools at the surface, sinks back down and gets replaced.

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It keeps circulating, so it never builds up enough pressure to do anything dramatic.

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A geyser has a tight spot in its plumbing, usually near the top.

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Down deep, the water gets hotter than a hundred ninety-nine degrees, which is the

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boiling point at Yellowstone's elevation.

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But the weight of all the water sitting above it keeps it from boiling.

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Then steam starts to form anyway.

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The bubbles push some water up and out of the vent.

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That drops the pressure on everything below, and all that superheated water flashes

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to steam at once.

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That's the eruption.

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It's less like a fountain and more like opening a shaken soda.

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The most famous one, of course, is Old Faithful.

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Members of the Washburn expedition named it in 1870 because of how steady it was.

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It erupts on average about every ninety minutes, though the gap can run anywhere

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from fifty minutes to a little over two hours.

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Each eruption lasts a minute and a half to five minutes, throws water anywhere from

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a hundred six to a hundred eighty-four feet into the air, and lets loose anywhere

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from thirty-seven hundred to eighty-four hundred gallons.

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Here's the part I like, though.

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Old Faithful gets the name, but it isn't the most faithful geyser out there anymore.

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That honor might belong to one called Clepsydra.

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Clepsydra is named for the Greek word for a water clock, because it once erupted

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about every three minutes.

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You could've set a watch by it.

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Then in 1959, a major earthquake hit near Hebgen Lake, about thirty miles northwest

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of the geyser basins.

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In the days after, the springs along the Firehole River changed.

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And Clepsydra has erupted almost without pause ever since.

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The water clock didn't stop.

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It just quit keeping time.

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So where does all that heat come from?

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You've probably heard this one, but it's worth slowing down for.

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Yellowstone sits on top of a volcano.

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Not a mountain with a crater on top, the kind you'd draw as a kid.

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This one is mostly underground, and it's big enough that you can drive across it for

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an hour without knowing you're inside it.

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It has had three massive eruptions.

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The first came about two point one million years ago.

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The second, about one point three million years ago.

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The most recent was about six hundred thirty-one thousand years ago, and that one

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left behind a caldera, a giant collapsed bowl, roughly thirty miles by forty-five.

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A lot of what visitors come to see, including the geyser basins, sits inside it.

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And the volcano left a trail.

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The hot spot that feeds Yellowstone has stayed in roughly the same place deep in the

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Earth, while the continent has slowly slid over the top of it.

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That's left more than a hundred calderas strung out across southern Idaho, like

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footprints.

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Yellowstone is just where the hot spot happens to be right now.

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The ground here still moves, too.

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The park records anywhere from seven hundred to three thousand earthquakes in a

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typical year.

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Now, I want to be careful here, because this is where Yellowstone stories tend to go

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off the rails.

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A volcano under a national park makes for great headlines.

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But the earthquakes and the steam aren't a countdown clock.

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They're what a living geothermal system looks like.

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That heat is the reason the geysers exist at all.

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Here's one more thing most people don't know.

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Yellowstone wasn't the first volcano in the neighborhood.

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The Absaroka Range, the mountains along the park's eastern side, were built by

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volcanoes that were active around fifty million years ago.

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That's long before the Yellowstone hot spot ever arrived.

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The mountains are named for the Crow people.

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Now leave the geyser basins behind and head toward the middle of the park, and the

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land opens up into a canyon you don't expect to find here.

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It's called the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

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It runs about twenty miles and drops more than a thousand feet.

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At the head of it, the Yellowstone River goes over the Lower Falls, three hundred

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eight feet straight down.

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That's nearly three times the height of the Upper Falls just upstream.

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At the peak of spring runoff, about sixty-three thousand gallons pour over every

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second.

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By autumn, it's closer to five thousand.

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The walls are what stop people, though.

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They're streaked with yellow, pink and cream, and the first thing nearly everyone

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says is that it must be sulfur.

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It's mostly iron.

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The rock here is rhyolite, the same volcanic rock that sits under the whole park.

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Over a long time, hot water and steam worked on it and turned it soft and brittle.

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The iron inside it was altered by that heat, and when it meets the air, it rusts.

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So those golden walls are, in a way, rust.

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The canyon is also young.

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No more than ten to fourteen thousand years old.

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In the life of a landscape, that's yesterday.

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In the 1870s, a painter named Thomas Moran came out to this canyon and sketched it.

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Some of those sketches were likely made from a spot along the rim that's now called

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Moran Point.

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And right around that time, something new was happening back East.

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On March first, 1872, President Ulysses S.

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Grant signed the law that set this land aside.

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Yellowstone became the first national park in the world.

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Not the first in America.

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The first anywhere.

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It's an idea that's been copied all over the planet since, and it started here.

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Head north, into a wide valley called Lamar, and you'll find the animal that's

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become the face of Yellowstone.

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The American bison is the largest land mammal in North America.

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A bull can weigh up to two thousand pounds, a cow up to a thousand.

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And for all that weight, a bison can run thirty miles an hour.

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Keep that number in mind.

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It'll come back later.

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It's easy to look at a herd grazing in Lamar Valley and assume it's always been like

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this.

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It hasn't.

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In the 1800s, market hunting and the U.S.

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Army nearly drove bison to extinction across the country.

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By 1902, poachers had cut Yellowstone's herd down to about two dozen animals.

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Then the story turned.

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Here in Yellowstone, the Army ended up protecting the bison that were left.

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Bison from private herds were brought in to build a new herd in the north part of

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the park.

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And it worked.

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In 2025, the park counted nearly fifty-three hundred.

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If you visit in late July or August, Lamar Valley gets loud.

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That's the rut, the breeding season.

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The bulls bellow, roll in the dirt and fight to settle who's in charge, and the

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northern herd gathers right there in the valley to do it.

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The calves come the next spring, in late April or May, after about nine months.

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They're born a reddish tan, a completely different color from their mothers.

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At around two and a half months, they start turning brown.

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And in winter, watch how a bison eats.

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Most hoofed animals scrape the snow away with their front feet.

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A bison swings its whole head side to side and plows the snow out of the way to

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reach the grass underneath.

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When the snow gets too deep, the herds move down to lower ground.

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One last story before we get practical, and it's one of my favorites in the whole

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park.

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The Firehole River.

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The story usually told is that early trappers named it for the steam rising off the

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water, like smoke.

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It starts out as an ordinary mountain stream.

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Then it runs straight through the geyser basins, and the geysers and hot springs

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pour their water into it.

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By the end, nearly a quarter of the river's water comes from them, and it can warm

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up by as much as twenty-five degrees along the way.

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Here's the problem.

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Trout are not supposed to like water above about sixty-eight degrees.

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That's the general guideline.

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But rainbow and brown trout live in stretches of the Firehole that run warmer than

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seventy-five.

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And the rainbows did something clever.

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Instead of spawning in spring, the way rainbow trout normally do, they've moved

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their spawning to the fall.

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That keeps their eggs clear of the hottest water at the end of summer.

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So in a river heated by a volcano, the fish changed their calendar.

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That's Yellowstone in one sentence.

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The ground sets the rules, and life finds a way to work with them.

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Okay.

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If this has you thinking about a trip, here's what's worth knowing before you go.

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First, stay on the boardwalks in the thermal areas.

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Every time.

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That crust around a hot spring can look like solid ground and be a thin shelf over

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scalding water.

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The park's rules are simple.

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Don't touch the thermal features or the water running off them, no swimming or

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soaking in hot springs, and no pets in the thermal areas.

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Second, give the wildlife room.

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The park asks you to stay at least twenty-five yards from bison and elk, and at

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least a hundred yards from bears and wolves.

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Remember that thirty miles an hour?

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The park says bison have injured more people in Yellowstone than any other animal.

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They look slow.

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They aren't.

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If an animal moves toward you, you're too close.

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Third, Old Faithful doesn't run on a schedule, but the park posts predictions for

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its next eruption.

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Check the prediction, then go see one of the other geyser basins while you wait

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instead of standing around for an hour and a half.

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Fourth, think about the season.

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Summer brings the most people.

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If you want Lamar Valley and the bison rut, aim for late July or August.

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If you want calves, think late spring.

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And if you're curious about winter, know that most park roads close to regular cars

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in early November.

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The one road that stays open all year, weather permitting, runs from the North

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Entrance at Gardiner, past Mammoth Hot Springs, through Lamar Valley, to the

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Northeast Entrance.

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That's the winter bison road, and it's a different park entirely when it's covered

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in snow.

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And last, book where you'll sleep early.

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Lodging inside and near the park fills up well ahead of summer.

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I'll put links to places to stay and tours that are worth your time on the episode

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page at travelwithglen.com, along with every source for the facts in this episode.

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So think back to where we started.

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A scientist kneeling by a hot spring, looking at a streak of color most people walk

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past.

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That color turned out to be alive, and a piece of it ended up in labs and test kits

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all over the world.

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That's what Yellowstone does.

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You come for the geysers and the bison, and you leave knowing the ground under your

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feet is a lot more alive than you thought.

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If you'd like to see it, the full episode with footage from the park is on the

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Travel With Glen channel on Roku.

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Search for Travel With Glen, or add it with the code T Q G K V J X.

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It's free to watch.

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And if this episode was worth your time, follow the show wherever you're listening,

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so Season Three keeps coming to you.

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Next time, we're going to the Grand Canyon.

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I'm Glen.

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Thanks for traveling with me.