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.