Our next stop was one of my favorites - it was a piece of land by a river that had a geyser area with steam just coming out of the ground. The ground where the geyser is is a stark white against the lush green grass by the river. The part that made it over the top was the buffalo that were just hanging around down there by the geyser. They were snorting and growling at each other and a couple of the males were fighting. It was such an amazing sight! The sounds the buffalo were making was so neat to hear that I videoed it.
We went to the boiling mud pots after the buffalo. This was just such a strange sight! It is literally huge mud puddles ground boiling becuase they are so hot! It's not odd to see hot springs with water boiling in Yellowstone, but to see the mud bubble like that making all kinds of gurgling noises is really something! My favorite part at this stop was the dragon cave. There is steam blowing out of a cave like a dragon is breathing fire back in there. Then there is hot boiling water shooting out of the cave towards you. Whne you add in the noises the cave is making, it is quite an experience!
We passed through another field of buffalo on our way to our next stop. There were hundreds of them hanging around down in that lush green field!
We stopped at Artists Point and did the short hike out to the point. Yellowstone has been far less busy than I anticipated it would be, but this place was crowded! The parking lot is not very large and there were cars and people everywhere. When we hiked out ot the point I knew why. Here is where you get a phenomenal view of the Lower Falls. This is the waterfall that is on all the pictures of Yellowstone. It is so much better than the pictures! The canyon in which this waterfall runs into is a true wonder! If I hadn't already seen the Grand Canyon, this definitely would have been the largest canyon I have ever seen. The waterfall itself is over 300 feet tall! We wanted to walk the steps down to the base of the falls, but that trail was closed for repairs. I might have regretted that hike halfway back up anyway! We spent a bit of time at Artist's Point admiring the canyon and the falls before we headed on up to Grand Canyon Village.
We ate a nice picnic lunch at Grand Canyon Village (There are picnic tables everywhere in Yellowstone!) and then did some souvenir shopping. I expected the prices of souvenirs to be really high in the park, but they are not. The kids had saved their own souvenir money, and they have had a blast shopping. I think it's almost their favorite time of every day.
Our last acitvity of the day was to hike part of the Wapiti Trail. The part I had wanted to hike was about five miles long. I wasn't sure how the kids would hold up, but it was supposed to be a fairly moderate trail and Dan thought they would be fine. The hike goes right through Hayden Valley which is bear country, so we had to take bear spray with us. The valley was beautiful to hike in and nothing like I have ever hiked in before. We went up and down rolling hills with beautiful views of Yellowstone. The hike also went through sections of pine forests with mountain streams running through them. We were very cautious every time we went into a section of forests because we didn't want to be surprised by any animals. We always sent the men with the bear spray first in those sections. We had to do two creek crossings during the hike. The water was cold, but refreshing. Dan and Rylie discovered a little waterfall along one of the creeks when they backtracked to pick up a pair of binoculars that Rylie had left. After we had been hiking about three miles the air began to smell like sulphur and we realized we must be close to a geyser basin. The only one we ever saw wasn't active, just white ground with old geysers, so I'm not sure where the smell was coming from. It was pretty neat to see the old one though. After we had hiked about four and a half miles the kids started to get really tired. We weren't exactly sure how much longer we had to go or where the car was and I was hoping we didn't have melt downs before we made it back. Thankfully, it wasn't much farther and we hiked the rest of the way down to the parking lot. Everyone was happy to take their hiking boots off and sit for awhile. My walking app on my phone chimed in about that time to let me know that we had walked over 19,000 steps.
Everyone was ready to make the two hour drive back to the house by that time. We stopped and got the kids some ice cream as a reward for hiking so far. We had a buffalo come down the road towards us as we drove home. It was so close I could have touched it out my window, but I was a bit frightened so I just took blurry pictures. Dan laughed at me, but he wasn't the one on the side of the buffalo!
We passed Yellowstone Lake on our way out. I had no idea there was a natural lake that large in the Park. In some places along the shore there are steam pots coming up out of the ground right by the water. It's a pretty amazing view along that drive!
We were all pretty worn out when we got home. We relaxed in the hot tub and looked at the stars before bed. The milky way is truly an amazing sight out here in the wilderness.
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