Our Third Day: Waterfalls

Our goal today was to make it to the Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. We had skipped them yesterday to make sure we made it to Mammoth. We did pretty good about not stopping anywhere on our way there. We did make one stop and found a bunch of buffalos by Yellowstone Lake.

I think this looks like a headless buffalo. Don't worry, he just had his head turned.

We headed out and made it to the Upper Falls. This fall was pretty spectacular (it was over 100 feet high).

While we were looking at the Upper Falls we found this little pathway along the rim of the canyon. We thought we'd go for a little walk since we'd been the car most of the morning. We followed it along until we came to the trailhead for Uncle Tom's Point to go down the canyon to see the Lower Falls. Now, let me explain a little about this hike. This hike mostly consists of one really long staircase (328 steps to be exact) that is suspended off from the side of the mountain and whatever ground could be found underneath. I didn't realize we were going to going on an actual hike or I would have changed from my flip flops. But we went down anyways, flip flops or no flip flops. The climb was a little scary. You would look down to see where to place your foot and you could see through the metal grid stairs down to the side of the mountain 15 feet below. At times it was a little freaky since you could see the ground so far beneath you as you were stepping down. It was worth it though for the view we had at the bottom.

Going up wasn't as bad, but this time we got a better look at what exactly was holding up on the side of the mountain.

I think this picture give a small sense of how far we climbed down.

We we got up to the top we read the sign for Uncle Tom's Point a little more carefully. Evidently, when Uncle Tom made the hike in the late 1890's he had people climb down the canyon on wooden ladders and rope handrails. And they went farther down then we did. They had this great picture of the ladies going down in their skirts, hats, and gloves. I don't think I would have gone down in those circumstances (and I had been complaining about going down stairs in flip flops.)

We then drove down to Artist's Point to have a different look at the Lower Falls.

Here is a movie of both waterfalls.

We then headed out and drove towards Norris Geyser Basin. We stopped to see Virginia Cascade.

We made it to Norris Geyser Basin. We only saw one half of the Geyser Basin though. The other side that we didn't see had the world's largest geyser located in it (shooting up 300-400 ft), but it wasn't going to be erupting while we were there. We did see Porcelain Basin.

If you turned around you would find this little lake.

After this we started our drive back home. We stopped in the Hayden Valley for more pictures of buffalo.

We also stopped to see some mudpods. This one was Sulphur Caldron.

We also meet a family of deer here.

We also saw the Dragon's Mouth.

That was the last stop for the night. We made it home before dark and might actually get to bed at a decent hour. Tomorrow we need to finishing seeing a few things before we head for home. There are a couple basins that we haven't gone to see yet so it should be another great day in Yellowstone tomorrow.

Our Second Day: The Day of the Buffalo

Today was a long, long day. We really wanted to go see Mammoth Hot Springs today. From where our hotel is it is normally only a hour and a half drive. However, a road is closed, so the trip to Mammoth that would normally be only an hour and a half is a predicted four hour drive. Well, we hadn't seen that side of the park either so we thought we would give the long drive a try.

On our way in we saw our first bison of the trip. He was just going along the side of the road. I'm grateful we had a car to stay inside to keep us safe. As we went along we kept seeing bison wandering along the side of the road.

We also saw this Blue Heron on our way into the park.

Our first stop was Black Sand Basin.

We then continued on and went over Craig Pass. The cool thing about Craig Pass is that at the top is Isa Lake. Isa Lake sits right on the Continental Divide so that water from the lake flows to both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.

Continuing on we came to the Yellowstone Lake. We drove along the side of the lake for a good part of the day.

Next we came to the Hayden Valley. Here we saw herds of buffalo.

Brad and I drove up to see if we could could get some good shots of a buffalo who had come up to the side of the valley. Brad turned around to fix his camera and found there was a buffalo right behind us. See for yourselves.

So, from here we drove for a long ways, up to see Tower Fall.

They had this crazy rock across the canyon.

From Tower Falls, we went to Petrified Tree. It was an ancient redwood tree that had been preserved by lava covering it over.

From Petrified Tree, we went to Undine Falls.

From Undine Falls, we finally made it to Mammoth Hot Springs. There were so many elk meandering around. We would be walking about 10 feet away from them and they didn't care.

This little guy was like this for a while.

We walked around Mammoth Hot Spring and found all these cool terraces.

By this time it was getting pretty late. The sun was setting and it was time to go home. Brad made the drive in two and a half hours. Not bad, but we got in a little before 11 and we are tuckered out. Tomorrow we're going to retrace a lot of our steps to catch a lot of the stuff we had to skip because we were running out of time to get to Mammoth. Things would be a lot easier if that one road wasn't closed, but we've had a lot of fun seeing all the beautiful country here in Yellowstone.

Our First Day in America's First National Park

As a celebration of our anniversary/my graduation/one last week of fun before school starts for Brad, we have gone on vacation to Yellowstone National Park. Neither of us have been here in years and with how much we both love photography we thought it would be a really fun trip.

Today was our first day in the park. We did so much! And we have a lot of pictures so consider yourself warned for picture overload.

First, we went to Firehole Falls.

We then went to Fountain Paint Pot.

Then we headed to Biscuit Basin and they had a bunch of cool springs there.

We had in the book that there was an easy to moderate hike to a waterfall father up Biscuit Basin. I was thinking, "Oh, this should take us no longer than an hour. This should be fun!" Little did we know how long/hard of a hike it would be. We ended up going up to the top of a mountain on switchbacks. Once we got to the top there was this incredible view.

From this point you can see a bunch of geysers. We got to see Old Faithful go off at one point from up here.

So, we continued to walk along the top of the mountain until we came down and found ourselves on top of the waterfall. We really couldn't see how high up we were because there was a big boulder, but we could see some other cascades coming down.

We hiked down a little more and we finally able to see Mystic Falls.

Brad decided to be a billy goat, but he slid down the mountain side. Okay, maybe it was just 5 feet, but he scared me so badly. He scrapped up his hand. So, we hurried back to the car to take care of his injury, but we took a moment to look at how high we climbed.

After debating whether to end the day early or to do one last thing, we decided we would go take a look at Old Faithful.

After that we headed home, but took a detour along the way. We went on a little drive to see Firehole Lake.

We also took quite a few detours throughout the day to take pictures of the wildlife. Today we saw. . .

Lots of female elk

One male elk

A coyote

Chipmunks

And even a Bald Eagle.

Now we are back at the condo, very tired, a little sunburned, and with achy feet. But we had so much fun today seeing the beauty of Yellowstone that we'll sleep soundly tonight and have another great day in American's first national park.