Finally…. the weather is improving. Sunshine and blue skies this morning, and warmer temperatures. After breakfast we headed back to Yellowstone Park. The line up to get in was far, far greater than a couple of days ago, the long weekend and good weather has brought out the crowds.
Today we were heading to the north end of the park to see Yellowstone’s version of the Grand Canyon. Very quickly it became obvious that on our last visit we were lucky to see so many bison, many of them close up. Today we saw far less, and most of them off in the distance.
Our first stop was at the canyon, where there were a couple of sets of waterfalls, the upper and lower. To get to the lower set we had a short hike downwards! It was ½ mile one way with a 600 ft. drop. Lyn needed a little persuading to make the trip, but it was worth it. All the recent exercise and weigh loss paid off on the return journey, it was a little “tiring” but we both made it back up with no lasting damage. Below are a series of pictures of the falls and the canyon.
Once we regained our breath from the walk up, remember we were 7000 ft up when we started the walk! we headed out towards Mammoth Hot Springs to see the terraces. Shortly after we got moving we hit a traffic jam; traffic moved very slowly but it turns out there was a good reason for this:
This black bear was just munching away on the grass a couple of hundred yards off the road (I love my new camera!)
No sooner had we got moving again we hit another slow down:
This elk was sitting regally in the field, a little further away from the road than the bear was (did I mention I like the new camera?)
We started climbing yet again until we reached Dunraven Pass at 8876 ft. This was a good place to stop for “lunch with a view”.
As you can see we were in snow country.
From here we start descending 2500 ft. into Mammoth Hot Springs. One look at the parking lots here was enough to convince to drive on through to the terraces.
The terraces are large flat areas of travertine rock, which is a form of calcium carbonate. They were originally spring fed pools of water with a high calcium carbonate content, due to the super heated water from underground passing through limestone on its way to the surface. The terraces have been deposited by the spring over many years but, due to recent minor earthquake activity,]the spring vent has shifted, rendering the terraces dry.
the last two shots were taken at the base of the terraces.
From here we headed back to the park entrance, spotting a couple of mule deer on the way, note the big ears.
We also managed to find a petrified tree before we left. This particular one was genetically the same as a California Redwood, and is no longer found in this area. Many thousands of years ago, they were very common here until a large volcanic explosion caused a climate change. This explosion also caused a large release of silica which blocked all the pores of this tree, effectively turning it to stone.
This was the end of our trip to Yellowstone ….. it was well worth it. If you get the chance to visit, take it.