Day 13 - Gardiner, MT to Tower Fall, Yellowstone National Park, WY

After my abortive attempt to camp in Yellowstone the night before, I got up early (again) and headed into the park, assuming I would assure myself a place to camp. The sign at the entrance promised open campgrounds, so I chose Tower Fall in the northeast corner of the park. Upon arriving, I found the sign at the campground claiming that it was full. It was still rather early, so I didn't know if that was a remnant of the previous night or if all the available campsites had been snatched by 7:30am. My first loop through the campground revealed that every site was indeed taken. Disheartened, I drove back out to the general store near the campground entrance in search of coffee. It was closed. So I putzed around for another half hour and made another swing through the campground. This time I found a gentlemen seemingly packing up his camp. I stopped and asked, and sure enough, he was indeed packing up and leaving a day early. A free campsite! I parked my truck at the edge of the site and waited like the vulture I was.

After establishing camp, I decided to drive the north loop in the park, which would include stops at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Norris Geyser Basin, and Mammoth Hot Springs. Here was today's route:


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The first grizzly bear!

The Tower Falls of Tower Fall campground.


And another grizzly!

Grizzly sightings taken care of, I moved on to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. This is Upper Falls from Artist Point.


I then hiked down into the canyon, much nearer the falls.



And this is the Yellowstone River just upstream of the falls. In fact, where you can no longer see the river is the lip of the falls.

Next up was Norris Geyser Basin. Hiking around here, I discovered that I am not incredibly adept at taking pictures of various geysers and hot springs and not making them all look the same. Neverless, here's a sampling of the 100+ pics I took today.








After the Norris Geyser Basin, I jogged south slightly to Artist Paint Pots which includes some of the bubbling mud holes in the park. The consistency of the mud in these really did appear to be about the same as house paint. Below is a bubble of mud bursting.


What some people may not know (but what Yellowstone tells you again and again through their interpretive exhibits) is that the park sits atop a supervolcano that has erupted many times over the years. The last major eruption was 640,000 years ago. And the one before that was 1.3 million years ago, and so on every 600,000 years or so. We're due. Anyway, at one of these eruptions, lava flowed all over the place. This cliff is made of obsidian and is an old lava flow.

These cliffs are a completely separate lava flow, which, by virtue of a different rate of cooling, have a completely different look to them.

Finally, dehydrated and tiring of all the hot water, I made it to Mammoth Hot Springs, which is a large set of travertine terraces. The spring has flowed at a much greater rate in the past, but even now, its scale is impressive.


Trees like these become entombed by the rapidly encroaching travertine formation. Once completely surrounded, the trees soak up the minerals in the water, which then infiltrate the cells of the trees effectively fossilizing the trees where they stand.


Tomorrow, I head south to Grand Teton National Park!