Our first stop that day was at the Gibbons Falls, the first of many waterfalls we would see that day. It was pretty, it was cold, and some tourists went over the fence and got way too close to the edge.
Next stop was the Norris Geyser basin. Yes, another geothermal place, but possibly even more interesting than Old Faithful. We walked there for over an hour, mostly on boardwalks but occasionally touching Wyoming ground itself. I liked the colors there, where I saw some vivid green and yellows I had not had a chance to see up close before, really pretty. The geyser and hot pools were impressive, but there is one other thing that wowed me: I counted license plates from 25 different states in the parking lot.
Further North we went, this time in search of the Mammoth Hot Springs Terrace. Now, this place was really different! Apparently there's a lot of calcium in the water which combines with bicarbonates and becomes something called travertine. The end result was that the whole area was covered in this white substance. While the previous geyser basins gave me a feeling of Disneyland, this one made me think of alien planets and Star Trek. An impressive place, but all the going up and down stairs was a little tiring after the first day. Not so for Alan, of course, that man in unstoppable!
By then we had enough and were ready for a break so we stopped for some ice cream and, apparently, elk watching. There were signs all over Mammoth warning us that elks were mean and we should avoid them at all costs, but the elks didn't reciprocate. They had invaded the village and were all over the place, roaming down the streets, grazing in front of the hotel and generally making a nuisance of themselves. We, of course, didn't care. We were tourists, elks in the middle of the village were exotic and we stopped traffic taking snapshot after snapshot. Eventually the rangers chased us away and we decided it was time to go to our next stop, Tower Fall.
So we drove for an hour or so until we got to Tower Fall. No nice view from the road, so we had to walk a little to see it but it was, as everything seems to be in Yellowstone, worth the effort. Beautiful, tall and impressive, but the best waterfall was still to come.
Back in the car and off to our next destination we had a really nice surprise, we got to see our first bears! A mamma Grizzly was, roaming the fields with her two cubs and we got a good view of them. Well, we got a good view of the mother since the cubs were mostly covered by the bushes, but we got occasional glimpses of them as they frolicked about and it was just exciting.
We stopped for a while at Mount Washburn so Alan could show us the place where he was almost snowed in a couple of days earlier. After admiring the beautiful, scenery, enjoying the sunny afternoon and complete absence of snow we went on to our final destination of the day, Yellowstone Canyon. Unfortunately I do not have the mastery of words required to do this place justice. It was beautiful, it looked like a painting, it was majestic, it was like a work of art; you have to see it with your own eyes to understand how impressive it really is. It also was the only place in the whole park where I got cell phone reception.
Now, Alan was probably feeling frustrated because for the last several hours most of our stops had required very little physical effort, so he decided we needed to hike to the bottom of the Yellowstone falls. Well,not exactly the bottom since we were running out of daylight, but down these iron stairs set along the mountain side for at least a couple hundred of feet so we could get a sense of the waterfall's size. Bel, Fernando and Gabriel were smart enough to decline his invitation, but Pedro, Ian, Alan and I started on our trek down, passing exhausted hikers coming in the opposite direction. With the risk of repeating myself, it was worth the effort. Everything in this darn park is worth the effort!
With the setting sun behind us we completed the loop and went back to Grant Village for a much needed shower and dinner. We went back to the main restaurant at the lodge where we got the same waiter from the previous evening. We ate, we talked, we drank and went to bed exhausted but ready for our final full day of adventures at the park.
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