I had an incredible time at the ranch for the week. We took the horses for a few hours until we got to the junction in Yellowstone, where I then took Gerry’s car out for an adventure around the park. I drove all over the place until I was able to find this area to hole up, listen to music, and wait for the sunset.
I’ve spent my 4th in the wilds of Montana, out exploring the periphery of the ranch. I had a long photohike in mind, but I ended up getting distracted and never made it too far during the long walk. I also took a break to do some sketching… which is not good because it is really cutting into my photography time!
Hope you all have a good fourth!
I walked with this neuroscientist from Houston and a bunch of other smarty pants on a 5 hour hike around Yellowstone and over a mountain range. We didn’t bring enough water, so we would stop at snow runoff areas like this.
On the way to the ranch, we stopped at Artist’s Point for a little artistic fun… I didn’t have long to spend there, so I grabbed some quick shots and moved on!
I was in a remote ranch in Montana for a week last year. Almost every day we would head out to ride horses, find a distant fishing hole, or just randomly explore. Everything was great until I decided to test the bear spray into the wind.
This was shot at my friend’s ranch near Yellowstone in the middle of the afternoon after a long day of fly fishing…
After a long hike through the mountains of Yellowstone, I came across over 40 horses sprinting from one meadow to the next. I stepped behind a tree to get out of the way and shot this one.
We were lucky enough to spend a week with Dr. David Sands, a microbiologist and geneticist (if those categories are even appropriate for someone so diverse). Almost every day we went out on nature hikes and never made it more than a few hundred yards from the main lodge. He would stop at just about any plant, pull it up, and rattle off a million interesting facts about it. He constantly had Ethan running to and fro to collect different samples and then enter a Socratic mode, helping him to figure out what everything he found meant.
Dr. Sands also brought several suitcases full of petri dishes and a variety of interesting bacteria that have been the subject of some tests in his lab back in Bozeman. Ethan and Dr. Sands did a number of experiments when they weren’t out in the field exploring and discovering.
The first time someone photographs a new phenomenon they get to name it, right? I call this a “Steamtrey”. [edit: on Flickr, someone recommended “Treynado”.] Well this shot took forever to get just right… The weather was perfect for the steam to come off the geothermal area and the wind patterns were even more perfect to whip up the steam into a 30-foot high tornado.
All that red in the foreground is a special bacteria that has formed in the super-heated water.
This is Yellowstone at sunset. It got rather chilly about this time but the warm steam from the geothermals kept us warm.
We drove down to the south of Yellowstone near Jackson Hole to explore the Grand Tetons. Just as I was taking this picture, a huge bison came up behind me and caught me unawares… and I barely got the fifth exposure to this HDR! It’s amazing how big those things are and they are still quiet.
I didn’t change the colors here!!!! Let’s get that right out of the way. 
I came to visit a friend in Yellowstone National Park over the weekend and for a few days next week. He has a beautiful ranch on the edge of the park in Montana and is inviting up a fairly eclectic group of intellectuals, mostly associated around various Libertarian think-tanks with which I am involved. I know it all sounds a bit heady, but it’s one of my fun academic cerebral diversions.
There are daily and nightly TED-like talks from plant biologists, entrepreneurs, geneticists, paleontologists, artists, and yours truly (who is giving a possibly-in-comparison presentation on humans evolving into a super-organism via online games and social networks).
The picture here was taken on the summer solstice in thin-crusted geothermal hotbed of the Norris Geysirs. This particular place was not too far from something called the “whirlygig” (or somesuch).
The various colors are made from two merging rivers, each one with a dramatically different temperature. Different color bacteria live in each temperature of water - the red bacteria was over 160 degrees and the green was below 160. If anyone else was there during this same time, they can confirm the quirky nature of these dual rivers running in the same channel!
