A few pictures from Yellowstone ... the scenery there is amazing. If you haven't been or haven't been in several years, you need to go. There's a reason that it's our largest and most famous national park.
Chromatic Pool
Creek to Upper Geyser Basin
Crested Pool
Daisy Geyser
Heart Spring
Morning Glory Pool
Old Faithful Geyser
Old Faithful Geyser (from Observation Point)
Riverside Geyser
Solitary Geyser
Blue Mud Steam Vent (the mud in the middle is boiling)
Great images S.J. Nice sharp with really good color. Oh me.....hearing your story and seeing your photos brought so many memories of our days on the road. I think most of you know that my wife and I lived in our motorhome and traveled the U.S. & Canada for 16 years. I remember standing around Old Faithful....with the crowd waiting for it to go off. People would be saying to each other "it's not going to go off." or "I think we missed it". But, of course....it did go up in a magnificent display. There are geysers there that are larger and shoot higher in the air than Old Faithful....but most of them erupt much less often and are irregular so they never know when they are going to pop off.
Anyway....S.J......your pictures gave me the old itch again. Gosh I'd like to go back and visit some of the spots we enjoyed so much years ago. AND....of course now I have my newer, digital cameras and sharper lenses.
Thanks much for posting them. If you are of a mind to do so I'd like to see more.....perhaps some you shot in Craters of the Moon.
P.S. Date 1967 - Craters of the Moon in Idaho. We camped here. Kids were young and these were our tent camping days and also using the back of the station wagon.
This is a scan of a 35mm Ektachrome. Unfortunately stored, over many years, in horrendous conditions of extreme heat and cold plus high humidity. Film transparencies really take a beating and deteriorate severely under those conditions. By the way, I broke my right ankle hiking in this park. Yep....THAT rugged. Yes...this is color film. But Craters of the Moon is all volcanic debris and is really almost colorless except for the women hikers with bright colored clothing. There is almost no vegetation there. These are NOT volcanos. Rather they are called cinder cones. Many eruptions here over millions of years but not the super violent kind that builds mountains.
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SJ - your Morning Glory Pool picture is one of the best that I've seen. I looked for comparable ones on Flickr, to use as my desktop background and yours was as good as any and better than 90% of them. The one here was too small. I finally found a Flickr one the right size (that wasn't use restricted) but it was not nearly as good as yours.
The first Old Faithful photo contains more than just Ol' Old Faithful ... I see what looks like three other Geyser's steaming behind it The NSPS website has a reference photo (and webcams):
Here's some shots from Craters of the Moon:
Broken Top Trail Lava Flow
Broken Top Trail Lichen (living plant, similar to algae or fungus, growing on the lava)
Broken Top Trail Odd Vegitation (completely white/tan plants)
Inferno Cone Lava Sink Field
Inferno Cone Overlook
Lava Close Up
North Crater Lava Field Overlook
Tree on Devil's Orchard Trail (older part of lava field, has some vegitation)
dhascall,
Download this for the Morning Glory Pool wallpaper. There's two uncompressed TIFFs in that .zip file, one for 16:10 monitors, sized at 1920x1200, and one for 16:9 monitors, sized at 1920x1080.
Morning Glory Pool used to have a deep, midnight blue center and went all the way to bright red algae/bacteria at the edge. Over the years, as people have thrown coins and rocks in it, they've clogged some of the water passages at the bottom of the pool, so the water no longer gets as hot as it used to. This caused the center of the pool to go to a green rather than the deep midnight blue. Also, the copper and zinc from the coins changed the water chemistry, and the red algae/bacteria no longer grows on the edge of the pool, only the orange algae does now.
It's so sad, we can't see it as it used to be. 
I'm truly impressed with your images S.J. Yep....that Canon is doing a great job for you.
I thought Craters of the Moon was one of the most fascinating parks I've ever visited. Lots of wildlife there also. Our kids had lots of fun feeding tidbits to the little ground squirrels that roamed the rocks and boulders around the campsites.
I'm just itching to take another trip out west to the mountain areas....if my lungs will support me in the rarified air. I've got both my Canon XSi DSLR and my new Panasonic Lumix pocket camera with the Leica super zoom lens. We had plans this past summer but the drought and heat kept us at home. In 2013 we're going...come heck or high water. I want to get back to Utah also. Arches National Park is a photographers paradise.
The 35mm camera I was using back in 1967 was a Voightlander Vito III. It was a compact rangefinder camera with a bellows and fold-up front. Voightlander lenses were top of the line and the Vito III used one of their newest of the time...an f:2 50mm Ultron. Very sharp lens. It wasn't until 1972 that I moved over to my new Konica T-3 SLR with the Konica f1.4 -50mm lens or my f2.8 zoom lens that I purchased in the Virgin Islands.
My biggest regret about the Lumix pocket camera is that it doesn't allow shooting in RAW format. I've become so accustom to the control it gives me with my images that I feel kind of helpless without it. I'm sure that I'll continue using the Canon DSLR for most of my photography.
In 1959 ...as a college graduation present....my wife and I traveled to the Rockies and spent quite a big of time out in Colorado. It was that year the the big earthquake hit in Yellowstone. Some campgrounds were quickly flooded and it was a fairly big disaster. A new lake was formed on the west side of the park and the plumbing of some of the geysers was affected enough to change their eruption timing. Even Old Faithful was interrupted....but I don't remember how much. There were other changes too. Some smaller geysers ceased activity completely and Yellowstone lake's bottom rose. That huge magma chamber underneath the Yellowstone volcano is still active. It's a monster. The volcano's crater is nearly as large as the park. Next time it goes up.....life in the U.S. will be changed.....and probably a good share of the rest of the planet too.
We were in Yellowstone with our children in summer of 1972. I did not have a wide angle lens so my picture of the pool is tightly cropped. This was on 35mm Kodachrome 64 film.
Let's see if it looks any different from what you saw, S.J. Your photo is MUCH better.
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Phil-101
I do remember Ektar, although I think I rarely used it. Kodachrome 64 was always my film of choice, it captured color like no other.
Even today though, there are some 35mm films still made that have their own reputation. Fujichrome Velvia 100 is well-known by nature photographers for its ability to capture highly saturated colors under daylight conditions, especially purples. I didn't shoot this one, but here's an example:
Sunset over the St. Lawrence River (shot on 6cm x 6cm Fujichrome Velvia 100)
SJ: Nice! I also experienced popping colors like that with Fujichrome. I did alot with Fuji negative film, too. I liked it because the greens popped more for nature photos and It actually worked best for me in my racing photos. There were hardly any green cars (save for Teo Fabi @ Indy 
), so I didn't have a problem with greens being oversaturated. The grain was a bit sharper than the normal Kodak print film. The normal Kodak negative film seemed to highlight yellows while Ektar overdid the reds. It was a bit disconcerting to give or sell photos when your eye is drawn to a part of a white car that is red, like the number, a decal or a window net. Ektar often took even the tiniest red object and made it look like it was glowing.
Phil: Here is a link to a Wiki article on Ektar. It morphed into Kodak Royal Gold. I used ASA 25, 100 and the ill fated 125 varieties. It came out right in the middle of my racing photography days. The wiki article also talks about Ektar lenses, too.
