Gardiner, Montana to West Yellowstone, Montana
September 10, 2011
After spending the night in Gardiner, Montana, the only entrance to Yellowstone Park that remains open year round, we drove along mountainous roads toward Mammoth Hot Springs.
Before reaching the park headquarters there, one can stand precisely on the 45th parallel north, the latitude which is halfway between the Equator and the North Pole.
The history of Mammoth Hot Springs goes back to the early days of Yellowstone National Park. In 1886 the U.S. Cavalry took control of Yellowstone, building Ft. Yellowstone and planting grass as a parade ground. The many acres of grass that were planted then have become a National Historic Monument and must be cared for as any other historic monument! This is the only cultivated grass in all of Yellowstone Park! Down the road from the town we came across this volcanic rock near the pathway to Mammoth Hot Springs.
Of the many spectacular waterfalls in the park, Undine Falls (below), is one of the most beautiful.
We continued to come across large sections of the park that had been devastated by fire. This area (below) had been covered with acres of Douglas fir trees, which usually can withstand forest fires; but these were not able to survive. New growth can be seen throughout the devasted areas.
Just downstream from Tower Fall in the Yellowstone River Canyon (below), these pinnacles are the result of different erosion rates of the various volcanic rocks found here.
Tower Fall, a waterfall in the northeastern region of the Yellowstone River, might be one of the park's most defining features; but on the north side, it's a small creek that spills into the Yellowstone, that gets most of the attention. Tower Creek flows past some odd-looking rock pinnacles, just moments before it tumbles 132 feet over Tower Fall.
A highlight of Yellowstone Park is the turbulent Yellowstone River (below), roaring and foaming for 20 miles through the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is one of the most amazing natural wonders in the Park. The canyon varies from 800 to 1200 feet in depth and from 1500 to 4000 feet in width. Its length is about 24 miles.
Yellowstone Falls consist of two major waterfalls on the Yellowstone River. As the river flows north from Yellowstone Lake, it plunges first over Upper Yellowstone Falls and then a quarter mile downstream over Lower Yellowstone Falls, at which point it then enters the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The upper falls are 109 feet high. The brink of the upper falls marks the junction between a hard rhyolite lava flow and weaker glassy lava that has been more heavily eroded.
The lower falls (below) are 308 feet high, or almost twice as high as Niagara. These falls descend from the 590,000 year old Canyon Rhyolite lava flow. The lower falls of the Yellowstone are still the largest volume major waterfall in the Rocky Mountains of the United States.
As we drove through the park each day, we were constantly on the lookout for any of the wildlife that we had heard and read about. From time to time we would see one bison or one elk. We even saw an osprey on her nest on a pinnacle in the canyon, but we were hoping to see large numbers of some of the animals.
Today we came upon a bull elk with his harem of cows and calves. Since it is the breeding season, we could hear the bugling of the bull, which is quite an unusual sound. The cows and calves were in a river when we first saw them, but when the bull decided to enter the river, the harem scurried up the river bank on the other side.
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