Day 13 - Yellowstone NP

Day 13

I have forgotten what day it is. Sunday, Monday, whatever day we're having a great time. Today we moved from the north of the park to the south. Before leaving Mammoth Hot Springs, we drove around the top of the upper hot springs. We then went over to Roosevelt Lodge for lunch. After lunch we continued going south to the Tower Falls which are 120 feet. Then we went to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. What an incredible site! We went to the North Rim first and we saw the Lower Falls from the top. They fall over 300 feet! That's twice as high as Niagra Falls. Then Cray noticed a path leading down to another place to view the falls from. So, he and I hiked down while Colleen happily watched from above. The hike was about 3/8 of a mile long, but decended over 500 ft. Going down was not easy but coming back up was exhausting. The view was magnificent, though. We then drove over to the South Rim and listened to a Ranger talk about the Canyon. We found out that it was created from a glacier melting and not gouging.

While traveling through the park we went through Dunraven Pass at 8900 feet of elevation. There we saw snow on the ground next to the road. Snow in July! Cray asked to stop as he has never touched snow. After a few snowballs between Colleen and Cray, he determined that it was too cold and he needed gloves. That ended the snowball fight and we continued on.

After the canyon, we drove back over to the paint pot and geyser area of the park. We saw the Artitst's Paint Pots, one of which was such thick mud that it spit it out over 7 feet in the air. In one of our guide books we learned that there was a great viewing place of the Prismatic Hot Spring from the Fairey Falls Trail. Cray and I went on this hike and found that we had to climb up an unofficial mountain trail. While climbing we found the trail to be very clogged with fallen trees, so we did not get as good of a view as we would have liked, but still a good one.

We then drove down past the geysers to Grant Village where we had a late dinner and spent the night.

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Part of trip: Out West

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