This should be an event worth attending: some of the area's top researchers and scientists -- including ichthyologists, ornithologists, mammalogists, entomologists, herpetologists and botanists -- will be gathering in Yellowstone National Park on Aug. 28-29 for the first-ever Yellowstone National Park BioBlitz, a 24-hour inventory of all living organisms.

Access to the greater Gibbon Falls area is closed effective immediately, as road construction between Norris and Madison on the Grand Loop Road forces the National Park Service to cut off access to the area. The closure will run through the entire 2009 season.

A record number of visitors descended on Yellowstone National Park in June, pushing the annual total to over 1 million. The National Park Services says 643,844 people were in Yellowstone in June, the highest tally ever recorded, and an 8.5 percent increase over 2007.

One of the joys of wandering through Yellowstone National Park is stumbling across one of its many unique gems. True, pools, basins, mud volcanoes, and geysers are everywhere in the park. They are what helped make Yellowstone America’s first National Park. In the next few weeks we’ll be taking inside looks at gems found not that far off the beaten path. Today we’ll look at one basin that is often overlooked when stacked against all the bigger, seemingly more active basins: West Thumb Basin.