| About 16 miles north of Fishing Bridge and Yellowstone Lake, the
Yellowstone River falls over Canyon Falls. It then flows through a Painted
Canyon over a thousand feet deep. Photography fails to portray the vast
panorama and the colour variations. The sun was drifting in and out of the
passing clouds. This adds to the vast array of colour variations. You can
view all this from a point on the canyon rim a mile or two downstream at a
place called "Artist's Point". There are other viewpoints on the opposite
side of the canyon which can be reached from the road to Canyon Village. |
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There are in fact two sets of falls neither of which is visible from the
other. This is the view from a little closer to the falls at the "Upper
Falls" viewpoint. Again the weather took a hand and the sun had disappeared
completely by the time we reached this. (We got delayed by a couple of
buffalo calves.) Both falls are major in size, the Lower Falls having a
greater drop than Niagara. |
| But it is the coloration of the cliffs which really takes your
breath away. This is constantly changing with the variation in light levels.
In this shot you can see the river at the bottom of the canyon but the north
canyon rim is some way above. |  |
 | The continental
divide passes through Yellowstone Park and the Yellowstone River ultimately joins the
Missouri and flows out eastwards to the Atlantic. This is one of the many rapids
upstream of the falls as it flows from the Yellowstone Lake at Fishing
Bridge. In the season this is an idyllic spot from which to watch the cutthroat
trout jumping, one of five species which are unique to this
water system. |
| Whilst at Fishing Bridge campground, we also went walking up to
the mountain-top above the lake. This was a short 3.6 mile hike rising over
1500 ft and was rated as strenuous! The path was mainly good climbing
through the endless lodgepole pines and negotiating the snow patches which
were still evident at these altitudes (8500ft). |  |
 | The view
from the top looking southeast over the lake to the Absaroka mountain range.
The visibility was at times quite clear and at other times obscured by the
rain/snow squalls. |
| On the way up we caught this little fellow utterly oblivious to
our presence or the fact we could see where his nut store was. This was
obviously a favourite spot since the ground was littered with the reddish
shells. I don't think I was more than three feet from him. |  |
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Some of the animals were more elusive but if you found a collection of cars
scattered over the road then you looked for the wildlife. Usually it was a
solitary bison but in this case there were about ten elk some 100 yards
from the road. |
| Equally uncommon were the buffalo calves although we did see a
few, some from quite close up. This can be a dangerous business since the
buffalo have been known to attack and gore spectators. Fortunately we had a
deep ditch between us and them at this point. |  |
 | Not so with the
herd. The easiest way between places was obviously the road and the buffalo
saw no reason why they should not use it as well, delaying the traffic in both
directions until they had got to where they were going.. |
We did not see a grizzly bear but we just missed several. One was spotted by
about fifty people just a mile up the road from the campsite, arguing with a
coyote over a kill. The second was when we visited West Thumb Geysers just as
the rangers closed half of the boardwalk because a young (four year old) grizzly
had just killed a young elk in front of their eyes within the basin.
Unfortunately it was not our eyes. Oh well, maybe next time... |