Into Yellowstone National Park

Someday, I would love to visit Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. This park was the first national park in America, established in 1872. This park is known for its incredible landscape and natural wonders, along with tons of wildlife that is a hint of the wilderness America used to be. In fact, Yellowstone contains 60% of the world's geysers along with mud pots, hot springs, petrified forests, and many waterfalls. The wildlife includes bison, grizzly bears, elk, and, one of my favorite animals, wolves. The weather in Yellowstone is very, very dry, with barely and rain and very dry snow. It usually gets extremely cold in winter and doesn't normally get above eighty degrees in summer. Therefore, if I were to travel there, I would need to be prepared for colder weather, no matter when I was traveling. I would also want to bring good clothes for outdoor activities. I would probably get to the park by plane, but driving accross the country would be an amazing adventure in itself.

If I went to Yellowstone, I think I would be most excited about seeing the variety of wildlife and some of the bizarre physical features. When I went to the Grand Tetons in sixth grade, we saw elk, bison, and wolves from a far distance, and I would love to have those experiences again. I would also be very excited to see the geysers and hot springs. One thing that I would really like to do is take a horse-back tour of Yellowstone. I love riding anyway, and I think that one of the best ways to really see amazing natural places is from the back of a horse.

Sources: http://www.yellowstone-natl-park.com/weather.htm

http://www.npca.org/parks/yellowstone-national-park.html?adwords=1&gclid=CJDyhOvGg6cCFUlN4AodpEXrfw

Pictures: http://www.travlang.com/blog/yellowstone-national-park-a-hotspot-amongst-the-tourists/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/us/22wolves.html?_r=1

Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, was born in Massachussetts and then moved to Corvallis, Oregon when he was two. He was very athletic, even at an early age, and at eight his father introduced him to mountaineering. He graduated from the Corvallis School in 1972 and then attended Hampshire College. At Hampshire, he studied Environmental Science and was part of a group who pioneered in climbing the Arrigetch Peaks. He was invited to write about this experience by the American Alpine Journal. He recieved his bachelor's degree in 1976 and the next year spent three weeks alone in the Stikine Icecap region of Alaska. It was there he met Linda Mariam Moore, whom he married in 1980. Krakauer worked as a salmon fisherman, carpenter, and a writer. He later abandoned the other two jobs to write full time. In 1996, he climbed Mount Everest. On the descent from the mountain, the group was caught in an ice storm and four of the group members were killed. Krakauer has earned the National Magazine for an article on his Mount Everest climb and the 1997 Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism for an artice on Mt. Ranier. He now lives in Seattle with his life and is an editor-at-large of Outdoors magazine.

Information: "Jon Krakauer." Gale Student Resources in Context. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.

Picture: http://www.newnewjournalism.com/bio.php?last_name=krakauer

Onward and Into the Wild

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is the true story of Christopher McCandless, who went on a two-year wilderness hike after graduating from college. McCandless, who was called Alexander Supertramp while he traveled, graduated in 1990 from Emory University with high grades and then stopped communicating with his family, gave away his savings, and began to travel. By April of 1992, he had reached Alaska. He had only ten pounds of rice, a .22 caliber rifle, a camera, a guide on edible plants in the area, and a few other books. He survived for about 119 days, while keeping a journal, was then found dead in an abondoned bus by moose hunters. This where the book, Into the Wild, begins.

Information : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild

Picture: http://siamfoundation.org/movies/2009/04/into-wild.html