Janet Chapple, Lake Merritt, Oakland, December 6, 2020 (photo by Karen Chapple)

Beth Chapple at Flaming Geyser State Park, Washington, November 15, 2020

Are you dreaming of Yellowstone and interested in holiday shopping? Independent Publishers Group is offering an amazing 40 percent off sale only through December 13. (Act fast!) They do recommend you order by Thursday the 10th to get delivery by Christmas. Both of these books make great gifts! Be sure to enter the promotional code IPGHOLIDAY40 to get the prices shown.

Yellowstone Treasures, Updated Sixth Edition (2020)

Plan your trip for just $14.97.
Buy now from IPG!
The photo-rich guidebook with 38 revised maps helps you plan and become the tour guide for your group. The paperback won Silver at the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards in both 2010 and 2018.

Through Early Yellowstone (2016)

Get inspired for just $17.97.
Buy now from IPG!
Enjoy adventure travel accounts from 1871 to 1916, with 19th-century art and maps both historic and modern. 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Honorable Mention in Travel.

Happy holidays, everyone!

We sympathize with what you’re going through, whether you’re sheltering in place or working at an essential job in these risky times. So we’re happy to report that our distributor, Independent Publishers Group, has a 30% off sale on all orders via their website through April 2020. Use the code KEEPCALMANDREADON to get the discount on any of our books on IPG’s store as well as their wide selection, from children’s activities to cookbooks to escapist fiction. IPG supplies you with print or e-books, whichever you prefer.

Our books [link to IPG’s store] work as escapist armchair travel, but with a practical bent, since you can apply what you learn to a future trip. Become the tour guide for your family or other group! As Janet Jones, the cover photographer for the new edition of Yellowstone Treasures wrote me recently:

“Yellowstone Treasures is a great way to virtually visit the place Yellowstone fans love.”

Yellowstone Treasures editor, author, and granddaughter visit Hot Lake on Firehole Lake Drive, Yellowstone, June 22, 2013.

Yellowstone Visits by Year

• 2019 – 4,020,287
• 2018 – 4,114,999
• 2017 – 4,116,525
• 2016 – 4,257,177
• 2015 – 4,097,710
• 2014 – 3,513,486

Explore Big Sky does not hazard a guess as to why visiting Yellowstone National Park has stopped increasing. Certainly summer will still bring crowds. Do you have an answer or even a reasonable speculation about this pattern of visitors? Are you planning a trip in 2020? Please write and let us know!

If you’d like to learn more about the job of being a fire lookout in the park, I recommend this short Inside Yellowstone video on the National Park Service website.

—Editor and Publisher Beth Chapple

Cliff Geyser on Iron Spring Creek

Recently we happened upon this 2015 Q&A on Quora.com that busts several myths at once, in a friendly and concise way.

Q. Does it look like Yellowstone is going to erupt soon?

A. There are no signs that we know of that point to an eruption any time soon. However, since we have never seen a volcano like Yellowstone erupt, we can’t be sure what the warning signs of an eruption would be. Some sensationalist sources take every little twitch from the volcano, and even events unrelated to geologic activity, as signs of an impending eruption. Don’t take them seriously.

In better news, at least one study has suggested that the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone is partially solidified to the point that it currently cannot erupt unless it gets a fresh batch of hot magma from the mantle.

One little misconception that should be covered here: Yellowstone is not “overdue” for an eruption. The little factoid that Yellowstone erupts regularly every 600,000 years is untrue. So-called super eruptions occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago, which gives intervals between eruptions of 800,000 and 660,000 years, though three eruptions are not enough to establish a reliable recurrence interval.

Credit: This answer on Quora was written by Nicholas Schiff, B.S. Geology, Mercyhurst University, Erie, PA.

In the guidebook: There’s much more in Yellowstone Treasures about the Yellowstone hot spot and supervolcano, especially in the Geological History chapter, pages 303 to 318.

Gibbon Falls is near the edge of the Yellowstone Caldera. A good place to see the caldera rim is between there and Madison Junction.

Yellowstone’s magma chamber, most geologists agree, currently does not contain the volume of magma needed for such a large-scale eruption, and the process of replenishing that chamber occurs on slow timescales. The USGS considers the risk of a caldera-forming apocalypse at Yellowstone in the next couple of thousand years to be “exceedingly low.”

In short, if a volcanic super-eruption at Yellowstone Park were imminent, the signs would be much clearer than a 100-foot crack in a rock wall. (Source: https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/07/18/fissure-opens-near-yellowstone-causing-park-closures-irresponsible-headlines)

Photo credit: Leslie Kilduff, 1996. The photo has been reproduced in Yellowstone Treasures from the first edition to the current fifth edition, where you can find it on page 290.

The superficial answer might be simply: It is important because it was the first place called a national park ever set aside by any country.

In answering this question one would have to ask two others: Important to whom? and Important in what way or ways?

Important to whom? Well, to anyone who cares about preserving remarkable landscapes from commercialism or from being despoiled. In 1872, when Congress passed the act setting aside the park and President Ulysses S. Grant signed it, the Yellowstone area was compared to Niagara Falls, because that phenomenon had not been preserved officially nor were businesses forbidden from setting up to sell whatever they wanted to the tourists who flocked there.

How was it important? Although no one in Congress had seen this remote western area, the men who had gone there were able to show photographs and paintings and tell them stories of what they had seen—phenomenal geysers and hot springs, lakes and waterfalls, mountains and valleys teeming with wildlife.

Not only Americans but people from all over the world are now able to visit and experience a place like no other, where only the necessary concessions are permitted and noone is trying to sell you anything outside of the few souvenir shops you may enter if you wish.

Considering the dire condition that many of our parks are now in due to underfunding by the federal government, it probably makes sense to raise entrance fees for people who are actually using these parks, especially during the busiest seasons (May through September for Yellowstone).

A caller to the program brought up the subject of charging more for people from other countries than for U.S. citizens—a thought that had also crossed my mind while I was listening. After all, when Congress passed the 1872 act setting aside Yellowstone, the very first national park in the world, they stipulated that it was “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” and chances are they were thinking of American people. Whether or not charging more for foreign visitors is a good idea (and I’m not sure it is), that is not a consideration included in the present proposed fee change.

Decide for yourself whether this fee hike would be a wise move by going to: [link] the NPS website.

Artemisia Geyser near Biscuit Basin

To celebrate, we would like to be sure you know about the Official Federal Recreation Lands Photo Contest, “Share the Experience.” This contest is sponsored by the National Park Foundation and FindYourPark.com/EncuentraTuParque.com. Through December 31, 2017, amateur photographers are invited to submit photos that highlight the best of America’s federal lands, national parks, and historical sites in various categories. The grand prize includes getting your image on the Annual Federal Recreational Lands Pass (2019), which is distributed to over 300,000 people annually, plus $10,000 and a bunch of camera gear. Wouldn’t it be cool to see an image from Yellowstone National park on the pass? The 2nd and 3rd prizes also include money and camera gear. You can see the winning photos from 2016 as well as more recent photos in the gallery at the Share the Experience website. That is also the place to learn about the contest rules and guidelines.

—Enjoy! Beth Chapple, Editor and Publisher

Photo Credit: Janet Chapple, June 2015. You can reach Artemisia Geyser’s beautiful pool and formation in one of two ways. One is by walking beyond Riverside Geyser about half a mile up what used to be the main road and is now a rather rough trail past Morning Glory Pool (page 95 in Yellowstone Treasures) or by parking at Biscuit Basin and crossing the road to reach the other end of the trail from Morning Glory Pool.

I first mentioned the seven-part podcast titled Threshold from MPR in my May 17th blog post. Since then, I’ve made it a point to listen to all the parts. It’s well worth the half hour each one takes. Amy Martin and her team are doing a superb job giving us a balanced and often moving report on what is being done to bring large numbers of bison back to northern Montana’s plains. Until the end of the nineteenth century, an estimated sixty million of them roamed the Great Plains and were essential to the natives’ way of life.

In the Yellowstone Treasures section on Living Things, I explain that the bison “symbolizes the wide open spaces of the West. Ironically, the bison is also probably the most grievous case of man’s wanton destruction of a natural resource in America’s history. Not only did hunters nearly eradicate the bison during the late 1800s, but the slaughter was actually encouraged by the government to suppress the Native American Indians who depended upon them.”

Listen to the MPR podcast to learn what Montana’s tribes and other interested people are doing to help restore bison to the plains.