It’s absolutely mind boggling how every single day of this adventure as been “awesomeness” (as Savannah would say) one day after another!

Since the temperatures consistently have been dipping down into the lower teens, we have been spending these lovely mornings kicking back in our warm and cozy camper, catching up on school, blogs and work. This seems to be the normal routine since we are not able to do school while traveling, for many reasons.. one we both get car sick and secondly, there is just too much to look at out the window! So we are doing work in the early AM when the temps are a bit chilly and after the sun goes down, while exploring by day.

Once again, Savannah visited a Ranger Stationrand picked up her packet to start working on her Yellowstone National Park, JR. Ranger badge.   One of the requirements is to sit in on a 30 minute ranger seminar. Yesterday’s seminar was about the “Wild” Yellowstone and government conservation. At least it was next to the Steamboat geyser. One curious fact, however, was the Government definition of “Wilderness”, and that Yellowstone Park is only 1% of the 2.2 million acres which are considered the Park but are actually designated for wildlife management.   Over 3 million tourists visit the park each year.

Our first stop was a pull off along the side of the road to view the Gibbon falls. We thought that was awesome… little did we know what we would see a few hours later! Our next stop was “Paint Pots”, then over to Norris Geyser Basin and finally we drove the North rim Canyon Village with a hike into the lower and upper falls of the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone”. Followed by a gourmet dinner near the campground at a hunting and fishing ranch!

On the drive out from dinner, we stopped on the dirt road surrounded by nothing and got out to admire the stars and milky way. It was absolutely spectacular!! We should have mandatory world wide black outs to reset our souls and help put us humans back in our place. The Milky Way was literally from one horizon to the next. The Big Dipper looked like it would reach down and scoop us up it was so huge and the bucket was facing down.   The clusters of stars and the brightness of planets were seriously incredible, never seen anything like it. The stars started from ground level all around, and nowhere have I witnessed such star power, not even down island where the viewing is also nice.  We so look forward to this sight again!

Back to the geyers and hiking! More mindblowing experiences! Both Paintpots and Norris Geyser Basin were plentiful of geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, mudpots and steam vents. For more information on these you can visit https://yellowstone.net/geysers/

Note: “Yellowstone’s 200-250 active geysers equal more than the sum of all the other geysers in the world! Upper Geyser Basin, which includes Old Faithful, hosts the world’s largest geyser collection, although Norris Geyser Basin is the park’s most active thermal area. Steamboat, the world’s largest geyser, is located in the Norris Basin.”

We witnessed Constants Geyser erupt in the Norris Geyser Basin, which by the way felt like we were walking on the moon! Literally only a narrow boardwalk separated us from thin crusts covering scalding water and vast areas of steam coming from the ground, some with considerable force. The hot springs were a beautiful array of turquoise and clarity. Steamboat geyser erupted on Sept 3, and since this happens only every 4 to 50 years, the steam we saw is still considered to be in the “steam phase” of the active eruption, so we can say we were there for the Steamboat eruption according to the Ranger.

Most spectacular was the Little Falls on the North Rim Canyon. We descended down a path 600 ft to view the top of the falls as she dumped over 37,000 gallons per second an additional 308 ft down into the Canyon. Never has nature made me feel so emotional. The raw power and beauty rushing through a narrow rock enclosure was overcoming for me.   I was literally stopped in my tracks. A quote I read later summed up the experience well.. “…As I took in the scene, I realized my own littleness, my helplessness, my dread exposure to the destruction, my inability to cope with or even comprehend the mighty architecture of nature….” –Nathaniel P. Langoford, 1870, one of the first explorers to record his impressions of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.

We then hiked long the canyon to the North Falls, in a more rugged trail setting where we did not see any passers bye but many more water features above that dropped down 100’s of feet into the canyon and only your balance and common sense to keep you from joining it. The Upper falls also impressive. The water flowed very swift through a narrow exit just upstream of the Fals where it then dropped 109 feet into a basin of mists which leads into the lower falls about a quarter of a mile below. Truly remarkable.

A bit of history on the Canyon and falls.. : “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River expresses the park’s complex geologic history in dramatic colors and shapes. Puffs of steam mark hydrothermal features in the canyon’s walls. The Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River add to the grandeur of this unique natural treasure. About 640,000 years ago, a huge volcanic eruption occurred in the Yellowstone, emptying a large underground chamber of magma (partially molten rock). Volcanic debris spread for thousands of miles in a matter of minutes. The roof of this chamber collapsed, forming a giant caldera 30 miles across, 45 miles long, several thousand feet deep. The caldera began to fill with lava and sediments. Infilling of lava flows continued for thousands of years. Scientists think the oldest Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone formed in rock and sediments about 160,000 to 140,000 years ago. This paleocanyon was not as deep, wide or long as the canyon you see now. Past and current hydrothermal activity altered and weakened the rhyolite, making the rocks softer. The Yellowstone River eroded these weakened rocks to deepen and widen the canyon, a process that continues today. The current canyon begins at the Lower Falls and ends at the Tower Fall. The 308-foot Lower Falls may have formed because the river flows over volcanic rock more resistant to erosion than the downstream rocks, which are hydrothermally altered. The 109 foot Upper Falls flows over similar rocks. The large rocks upstream from the Upper Falls are remnants of a lava flow resistant to erosion. The multi-hued rocks of the canyon result from the hydrothermally altered rhyolite and sediments. The dark orange, brown, and green areas near the river are still-active hydrothermal features. Their acitivity- and that of water, wind, and earthquakes- continue to sculpt the canyon…”

Still many wild life encounters, and signs of wild life!  Off to Old Faithful and fly fishing.  Happy Trails! PS.. we are averaging around 300 photos a day.. it’s impossible to share them all and the ones that i do share take forever to upload to blog.. hope my words are painting a picture.  🙂