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Road Trip 2010, Part 7

Scenery!

This was our campsite in Yellowstone. We didn't spend much time there. We'd get up, zip up the tent, head to the restaurant for breakfast, and then head out to see the sights. We'd return when it started getting dark, go to sleep, wake up at sunrise, and do it all again.

All of the garbage cans in the park were armor-plated to keep the bears out.

These are called the "Hoodoos". They're chunks of Limestone that fell down from the mountains. They're located just south of Mammoth Hot Springs. They're unlike most of the other rocks you see in the park.

Here's that idiot again, this time standing on a rock.

Natural Bridge. This was one of the few things we saw that wasn't right on the road. It was about a two-mile hike to get there. There's a creek running underneath it, and a small waterfall. The girls and I climbed up directly underneath the bridge itself.

Moira at the waterfall under the bridge.

Gwen and me at the waterfall under the bridge.

"Don't mind me! Go climb up to the bridge and check it out, I'll just wait here."

Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River. This is larger than it may look. For scale, there's an observation platform to the right of the falls, with tiny people on it. You can also see a bridge over the river in the background. After the upper falls, the river flows around a bend, and then drops down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, forming the Lower Falls.

This is at the start of the trail down to get a view of the lower falls. An earlier sign told us that it was a 500-foot descent. Think 50-story building. Going down? That was easy. Going back up? A little harder. But Moira and I did it.

A rainbow from the Lower Falls. This was on the way down.

Moira at the bottom, with the falls. See that guy with the little kid? He had to carry said kid all the way back up.

A view of the canyon from the bottom. The yellow rocks in the canyon are what give the park its name. Reducing the size of the picture destroys a lot of the cool detail. Click for the full-size version. It's large, but worth it.

Another view of the canyon, this time from a place at the top called "Artist's Point". Again, click for the full-size version.

A burnt lodgepole pine.

The columns in the middle are basalt laid down as a 25-foot-deep layer of lava from an eruption 1.3 million years ago.

A 50-million-year-old petrified redwood tree. The sign here said there used to be three trees, but souvenir hunters in the early days of the park chipped away at the other two until they were gone.

On to Part 8!