2012/07 Western USA trip - Yellowstone's waterfalls |
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Tuesday July 10th
It had been a cold night but the day was bright. I declared it to be the waterfall day as they would be the main target, but on the way to the falls we’d have to drive around Yellowstone Lake, take in the Mud Volcano geyser basin, and cross the Hayden Valley.
The geyser field has some really odd attractions like the Dragon’s Mouth, shown here, where a wave of boiling water rushes out of a cave
. Then there’s the mud volcano itself, and the Churning Caldron. Just for added spice, there was a large bull bison walking around the geyser basin with us.
The Hayden Valley surrounds the Yellowstone River on its serene but short journey before it plummets over the Upper Falls. Bison sightings in the valley are almost certain and sometimes you can be stuck for a long time if the herd decides to sit down in the road.
We parked at the Upper Falls and walked the rim trail down to the Lower Falls, a longish and bumpy walk, but nice to get away from the traffic. There was a lady with a broken leg on the trail waiting for the paramedics to arrive. Neither of the overlooks was as crowded as
I’d feared; perhaps we were just lucky to get there between busloads. The views of the canyon and the Lower Falls were as spectacular as ever.
We drove around the canyon to the north rim and walked a couple of trails there, just for some variety of viewpoint; the falls look much the same but the colours in the canyon walls are different. Yes, that is a large chunk of ice in the canyon’s shade. We also saw this enormous osprey nest and after a while, the osprey chick emerged for some distant pictures.
Then we were off on the road that climbs around Mount Washburn and then drops down to Tower Falls. We passed a couple 
of wildlife jams on the road, but saw neither bear nor elk. We looked at the falls and the “towers” above them, but we’d all done the walk down and up in the past and no one felt like repeating it on a hot afternoon.
We drove back up the mountain, getting a distant view of a bull elk. I took a side trip up the gravel of the Chittenden Road, hoping to see more elk, but there were none in sight. Hayden Valley was teeming with bison and people watching bison, so the going was slow. Near Fishing Bridge we found this small herd of cow elk.