Here There and Everywhere

Yellowstone: Roaring Mountain

Mostly I don’t give an attraction a post all it’s own in a travel article, but of all the sights I saw in Yellowstone, Roaring Mountain struck the deepest chord. It was a beautiful morning. We were mostly the only ones there. A couple RVs pulled up and didn’t even bother getting out.

I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I imagine the earliest explorers coming across it and wonder at the wonder they must have felt. Although there was a breeze, the springs and steam were so continuous that they never fully blew away. You hear a constant rush of steam, a sizzle, bursts.

Sometimes, on this beautiful earth, you get a feeling you are truly standing on Holy Ground. I felt that way at Saint Simeon’s in Syria. I felt that way at sundown on the desert of Sossossvlei in Namibia. And I felt it here. It i beautiful, and eerie, and if you are not filled with the awe of the great Creation, I can’t imagine what will move you.

And here is where Roaring Mountain is located:

We joke about Disney-does-Yellowstone, which is sort of what it’s like in some of the more commercialized and traveled places, but there are moments and locations when all the Disney-esque goes away, For me, Roaring Mountain is one of them.

Just north of Roaring Mountain, en route to Mammoth Hot Springs, is an Obsidian Cliff, where you could hike for many years, but the visitors and hikers kept taking obsidian home as a souvenir, and now the site is unmarked and closed to visitors.

June 24, 2019 - Posted by intlxpatr | Adventure, Beauty, Faith, Geography / Maps, Photos, Road Trips, Spiritual, Stranger in a Strange Land, Travel | Roaring Mountain, Yellowstone National Park