Today's plan was to visit Canyon Village in Yellowstone National Park and see the Upper and Lower Falls on the Yellowstone River. We were actually able to complete the entire upper loop, but it was a long day. There was a really nice display at Canyon Village that showed just how big previous Yellowstone volcanic eruptions have been. The last big one, 640,000 years ago, was 1,000 time the size of Mount St. Helens.
This display, in the Information Center, blew my mind!
How many of you remember when Mount St. Helens blew?
(Just in case you can't read this above.)
We visited the south rim of the canyon first. It was so spectacular and different from anything else we had seen in the park. This canyon has formed over the last 100,000 years as opposed to typical canyon formation of this size taking millions of years.
We thought we should get some exercise, so we took Uncle Toms trail about 2/3 of the way down the lower falls. (We were hoping it would go to the bottom, but no.) It was 500 feet and 300 metal steps. What I had forgotten about was that we were at 8,000 feet above sea level. There's just not enough air up here for that kind of exertion. But the view was worth the effort - don't you think?
Looking away from the fall, down the canyon.
The color of the water is amazing.
Rainbow in the mist and the last bit of snow.
After climbing the stairs, we found some shade where we took a moment to catch our breath and have a protein bar and a cold drink.
The Upper Falls was great, but after just having seen the Lower Falls it was hard to measure up. Maybe we should have seen it first.
The canyon at around 9:30 in the morning.
There were many overlooks and all with breathtaking views!
Osprey nest with three babies (can only see the adult without binoculars).
This guy caused quite a traffic back-up.
Tower Fall (I don't know why it doesn't rate the plural "Falls") was pretty as well, but I was disappointed to find the trail to the bottom was closed. Maybe for the best, as we had already had our exercise for the day.
Construction on the road between Canyon Village and Tower-Roosevelt had us stopped for about 20 minutes.
It gave us time to study the very unusual layer next to us. It looked a little like the vertical rock at Devils Tower. The same layer appeared across the valley. We noticed another similar layer a couple of hundred feet below this one. Interesting geology - I must look it up sometime.
We stopped again at Mammoth Hot Springs and explored the lower terraces we had previously missed when we ran out of daylight on our previous visit.
That vertical formation I think is the geologic clue on the those previous eruptions. Each major eruption had spewed so much hot ash before the eruption it hardened a layer of soil each time. -SEW
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