Roxy's Reign Ends: The Waterfalls of Yellowstone

Friday, June 7, 2013

The Waterfalls of Yellowstone

One of my favorite parts of the trip was seeing all of the waterfalls throughout Yellowstone. There are hundreds of them and only a handful are accessible by roads, but they are all beautiful in their own way.

This is Gibbon Falls. I wish I had captured a video of the rushing sound from this spot. It was so relaxing and wonderful. While these falls were nice, I particularly enjoyed the view of the valley which the water was flowing down into (see below).

One afternoon, Michael and I decided to take a longer hike to see the Mystic Falls. This was a photo taken right before the trail head. We were so excited and optimistic...then we walked back to the trail head and found a "trail closed" sign. It's apparently in a bear management area that was still closed for spring when the bears come out from hibernation. Drats!

We consulted our map and decided to take a different hike to a place called Cascade Falls. We walked through a forest that had been burned in a wildfire several decades ago and thousands of trees were in varying states of decomposition. It made for some wicked patterns and tree stumps like the one below.

Once we got to the peak, we rested and had our small picnic near the falls. It's not much to look at compared to the Upper and Lower Falls of Yellowstone, but it was interesting to see what happens when nature is left completely on its own without human intervention.

Feel free to insert your own joke here about what happens when a tree falls

in a forest and nobody is around. This is Cascade Falls, by the way.

Since nobody was around to take our picture at the top of the mountain we just did it ourselves.

Ironically, this hike was also the best cell service of the entire trip. We walked right by this cell tower which was the only one I saw the entire trip.

Toward the end of our trip we decided to visit the Lower and Upper Falls which are the iconic waterfalls of the park. It was probably best that we saved these for last because the are so spectacular.