Here’s your science lesson for the day: Water deep below the surface of the earth is heated by the Yellowstone Volcano. The water bubbles to the surface, and flows out over the top of the Orange Mound. Calcium Carbonate and Travertine deposits left behind by the water create the formation. Some people we were talking to said that when they visited Orange Mound Spring a year earlier, it was much, much smaller. At this point, it is growing over the current road way, and work of moving the roadway to accommodate the formation has already begun.

Orange Mound Spring is only one of several examples that show the park is always in transition. Word is that no two visits to Yellowstone are ever the same.