Favorite Yellowstone Days, Part Two

After our day trip to Cody, our last two days in Yellowstone were fantastic. Our first outing was taking the Firehole Canyon drive, which was a scenic one-way drive (and not accessible to tour buses, bonus!). 

We just have one photo here, as we didn't take our camera down to the swimming hole. (Yes, for the water issue, but also, I don't think cameras and swimsuits really mix well for me.)

There is a great swimming hole near the end of the drive, and while the 'fire' in the title may lead you to think that it's really hot, it's just warm-ish. Still, you can feel the effect of the thermal springs, and the river temperature is easy to get acclimated to. We stayed in the river the better part of the afternoon, swimming upstream and floating down. Our oldest declared it the best day ever. He and another boy were taking turns jumping into the rapids and catching big waves. All of those hours on swim team paid off! The rest of us were happy to meander around in the water, watch the college kids jump off the cliff edge (yikes!), and just generally frolic around.

This is downstream from the swimming hole; we didn't play near any falls.

The last day we planned on hiking Mt. Washburn. We saved this for last to give ourselves time to adjust to the altitude (as it's a 10K high peak). Right away, literally seconds after we read a sign asking hikers to stay of the fragile alpine tundra, and on the trail, we saw three tourists plowing away at full speed towards us through the tundra. ?!? They stopped right behind us, and told us there was a bison on the trail ahead. Aahhh. . . that explains it. (We did have a chuckle that these guys put three kids between them and the bison. Super tough move.)

Here it comes down the trail.

 

And here it is passing us. I'm surprised that this turned out, as we were hoofing it onto the tundra and out of its way.

This was about as far as we got on the trail before the approaching thunderstorm made us turn back. I think that this is the first hiking trail that we didn't complete, but being on a mountain peak in the storm seemed a bit dicey.

We had to stop by the ranger station later, as one of our children was really upset that we walked on the tundra (to give the bison the space to get by us in peace). We asked if we made the right choice, or what we should have done, and he kindly let us know that giving the bison space was the right call. Whew. I'm not sure we would have lived that down if we had made the wrong call.

We did get another great drive through Hayden Valley, my favorite section of the park.

 

 

Stopped to check out a pelican eat its lunch.

 

 A group of trumpeter swans.

 

We then had enough time to fit in another hike, along the north rim of the Yellowstone Canyon. This is a great trail, with good views of the canyon and very few other hikers.

 

 Enjoying the pacific northwest-like scenery.

Lots of great viewpoints along the trail.

As we were ready to call our Yellowstone adventure closed on our drive home, we saw the sign that Mud Volcano was open. It had been closed the entire week due to the fires; so this was a nice surprise.

The dragon's mouth.

 

Mud, lots of awesome mud.

Then, farewell to the beautiful Yellowstone Park as we head toward the Grand Tetons.