Grand Canyon Explorations

Work here at Yellowstone has been fast and furious. Being the 100th anniversary of the National Park system. Yellowstone is actually older than that. Yellowstone was established in 1872 making it the first national park and also the largest. This place is huge and I feel for the people that vacation here for a few days because there is no way you can see all if it in that amount of time. For instance we had another day off and we chose to go to the Canyon area and Fishing Bridge area. Just doing those two areas took us all day and we were tired when we got home.

So we saddled up Lil' Blue and headed south into the Canyon area. Buffalo traffic was light so we made good time. We first pulled into the Canyon Village. We wanted to check out the other Delaware North stores so that if we worked here again we would know what the other stores looked like. They have two in Canyon. We then just looked at the Canyon Lodge area to see what they offer. They have cabins, restaurants, gift shops and a campground. We drove through the campground and if you want to camp here there are a few spots that are big rig friendly.

Next we headed to "The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". The Yellowstone River has carved out a fairly deep canyon here and there are two beautiful waterfalls. The first one we came to was the Lower Falls. There is a 1/4 mile hike to the brink which we took. There is a 600 foot elevation drop to get there, which means there is a 600 ft. climb on the way out. So we both have thighs like Hulk Hogan now.

The brink of the lower fall

After the view from the brink, we wanted to see what the view from afar looked like. So off to another over look, again with a short 1/4 mile hike and another 600 ft. drop in elevation.

The Lower Falls

Like I said before, people on vacation just cannot see everything. We spent nearly the whole day here hiking to all the overlooks. 

Canyon view

I included a couple of views of the canyon itself. It is truly a beautiful area. We then went to Inspiration Point to get inspired.

View from Inspiration Point

120,000 years ago Yellowstone was covered by a glacier 4,000 feet thick. There is evidence of that all around the park. Here is a boulder that was deposited on top of a ridge by the glacier.

Glacial Boulder

We saw all that we could see on the north rim so we headed over to the south rim. Most of the overlooks are all about the Lower Falls. We found the overlook for the brink of the Upper Falls so we stopped to look at that.

The Upper Falls

A couple of views from the south rim. There are not as many overlooks on the south side.

The Upper Falls

From Artists Point

After we thoroughly explored the canyon area we wanted to check out some of the other general stores for future reference, in case we wanted to work in a different area. So went down to Fishing Bridge and the Yellowstone Lake area. On the way we caught this rare sight that we just had to take a picture of.

A Bison standing next to a Buffalo. We have been here 3 weeks now and I still can't tell the difference between them and I am Native American. To me they both look like Ta-tonka. 

On the way to our next destination we came across a mud volcano. We are in the Yellowstone Caldera now so the geo-thermal sights are popping up. The smell of sulphur is everywhere. 

Mud Pot

The mud volcano. It hasn't erupted since the 1800's when it shot mud hundreds of feet into the air.

Mud Volcano

We  then checked out the stores. Each store is different. The Fishing Bridge store was very big and rustic. It was a very nice store with a food counter in the back. There is also a campground here that is big rig friendly and has about 300 sites. We then drove to Yellowstone Lake and looked at that store. Smaller and rustic also. Yellowstone Lake is huge and it is funny seeing a lake with no boats on it. Being from Minnesota, you look at a lake there and there may be dozens and dozens of boats zipping back and forth.

Beautiful Yellowstone Lake

It was dinner time and we where getting hangry so we went back to Fishing Bridge to eat. The food was good. We each had a hamburger. We started talking to our waitress Zoe and found out that she was from Fargo of all places. We talked about the job and what brought us to Yellowstone. People are interesting.

Just a side note. I talked to a young couple last night. He was from Russia and she was from the Ukraine. They had that very thick Russian accent that was neat to listen to. They where on a trip to see America from east coast to the west coast. It was amazing how much they had seen and still had to see. I thought it ironic that their rental car was a good old fashioned Mustang convertible. 

That is it till next week. This blog that used to take a couple of hours is now taking days to write because of our slow internet here in the park. 3 G most of the time which has been slower than dial up. 

I would like to add one more thing. I would like to say how fortunate we are to be living inside such a beautiful National Park like Yellowstone. The sun is shining and the birds are signing.