Good-bye to Yellowstone

It's hard to get much sympathy for our work load since we've retired. But we have found that we can really get tired from our long days of exploring beautiful national parks. We were glad to have a Sunday to go to church and then stay around the campground to relax. But like dedicated workers, we were up early the next day. We needed an early start to see the last of the Yellowstone sights on the southern loop that runs through the park.

Just to prove that this is a very big park, it took a full hour's drive to get to our first stop at Canyon Village. We got our first view off the north rim of the deepest canyon in the park around 9:30.

Mark took a picture of Denisa standing at the viewpoint of the roaring Lower Falls.

The Yellowstone River seems like a tranquil stream until it flows thru this canyon. Then it becomes a raging tunnel of water.

Again, Denisa is standing on the edge of another viewpoint, enjoying the view from inside the canyon. It was a steep trail to get down into the canyon, and it seemed even steeper as we hiked back to the top rim.

We also hiked to the brink of the Upper Falls, to get another perspective of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

We had been warned that this area can get congested after 10:00, and we can verify that is true. We were lucky to find a parking spot. We stopped at Artist Point to get a view down the canyon of the Upper Falls.

That's a handsome face at Artist Point on a beautiful blue sky day!

There are several stops along the southeast quadrant with names like "Mud Volcano" and "Sulphur Caldron." They are as messy and stinky as their names imply. This is the Dragon Lair, that sounds and smells as if a dragon is living inside.

We looked down to see people holding strange instruments at the base of this bubbling mud pot. We found out that a university group is doing a study, measuring the elements that these mud pots are belching.

The next section of the park is all about Yellowstone Lake. With 110 miles of shoreline, it's a long drive around it.

We loved the West Thumb Geyser Basin, with all the great shades of blue in the surprisingly deep pools.

We could see the silty blue of the geyser pools, the crystal blue of Yellowstone Lake, and the sky blue of--well, the sky.

Sorry for all the pictures, but this clear water is a stunning color that just begs to be photographed.

We stopped at two more stops on the southern loop. We have seen more unusual geothermal sights in the last three days than in our entire 55 years. We were on overload from all the brightly-colored-beautiful-pools.

But we can't help but take pictures of all the bright orange and blue around us.

We can throw in a few bright yellow streams that appear just out of nowhere.

This thermal water is heated right off the volcano that lies under Yellowstone National Park. Some of the pools are so deep it looks like we can see down into that caldron. There are so many of God's wonders inside this park!

It's getting late enough in the day that we are casting shadows onto the shiny orange fields of thermophiles.

When we first arrived in Yellowstone, we got a list of hikes in the park. We love to hike, and that is our favorite activity in most national parks. But Yellowstone is unique. There are so many things to see, and most of them involve walking a good distance. So we have walked around 30 miles in our three days inside the park, without taking a single "hike." We ended up on this trail at the final stop of the day.

We were heading towards Mystic Falls, glowing in the canyon as the sun is sinking low.

We saw our final Yellowstone bison as we left the park for the last time.

As we say good-bye to Yellowstone National Park, we feel a special blessing. We've had great weather and beautiful blue skies that we no longer take for granted. We have once again wandered into some of God's most unusual wonders!