Thursday, Sept. 16 - Today we finished the Grand Loop, driving back around to pick up the road we came in on in the RV, since we didn't stop at the lookouts then. After our two 12-hour marathon days, we were both a little tired today, so we didn't get started until 10:00. But we ended our day about 6:30, and tomorrow is going to be a day of rest and getting ready to leave on Saturday, so we are looking forward to that.
Our first stops were at the Brink of the Upper Falls of Yellowstone River. We had seen it from the other side, but we had not driven back to this lookout.
Then we stopped at the Brink of the Lower Falls, which we had not seen before. I think this road had been closed when we passed it the other times.
This area is called the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and it is pretty magnificent. There were several lookouts along here, and we stopped at them all.
As we continued our on loop, we saw the smoke again from the "managed fire" they started yesterday here. It is really windy today, and this does not seem like a good idea. There is a lot of burnout in the park, from a 1988 massive forest fire. That was the dryest year on record here and there were 50 fires that year. But now the trees are growing back, and the fall colors of the trees and flowers in the burnout areas is really beautiful. Banks are just covered in colors.
These hexagonal columns were caused by volcanic flow. We see several shelfs like this in this part of the park.
And there is a petrified redwood tree here, caused by volcanos millions of years ago.
This park has many faces, from forests to steaming hot spots, to meadows, rivers, creeks and waterfalls. The park encompasses 2.2 million acres and there are roads that let you see a lot of it. A lot of people fly-fish in the river here (walking out through the bison sometimes). The ever-changing landscape is very interesting.
Mammoth Springs, the entrance we came through initially, has lots of geysers and travertine terraces. Steam vents, called fumaroles, are also abundant -- hissing steam and gases stream from many spots throughout the park. This one is called Orange Spray Mound.
We came upon another pretty waterfall, Unidine Falls. We just keep taking pictures.
We drove by this mossy creek area on the way in, and thought Bridgette would be interested in it. We couldn't figure out what kind of grass is the stream, but Joe stuck his hand in the water and it was warm. Just a little further downstream, we saw the steaming hotspots that warm up this creek.
The bison roam freely here, and there are thousands in the park. We usually encounter at least one buffalo jam every day. They are very funny to watch, they just saunter along, and could care less if cars are right in front of them. They seem to know they have the right-of-way. We still haven't seen any bears. There was a black bear sighting today on our route, down in a valley a little ways from the road, but there were so many cars pulled off that we couldn't find a place to park. A park ranger was hustling up there, trying to get the traffic under control. We went on past, but there was a six-mile loop road that we took, and we ended up back by the bear sighting, but it had just gone into the bushes or trees and could no longer be seen. And we still didn't have room to park!
We saw 2 deer today, and 5 elk on our way back. It was getting evening then, so the animals (at least the elk) were starting to move around. And, of course, we saw hundreds of bison. Another great day in Yellowstone!
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