Galina YoungAnother early morning with school. Luckily the weather is much better and we can spread out a little. Sasha, who has her PE class, is jumping around the trailer while I am catching coffee cups raining from the counter. May be we need to level the trailer a little.
Afternoon is glorious, sunny and warm but not too hot. We are back at the park and go on the long hike to Lower and Upper falls.
We start in the woods along the Yellow stone river and see the Lower falls almost right away. It is gorgeous.
We hike up on the cliff along the river and the view is getting better and better. The river descends into the narrow canyon of red and yellow rock and you can barely see it snaking on the bottom as we climb higher up the canyon’s side.
We make it to the upper falls overlook at Painters’ peak. There we are in for the treat: not only the view is breathtaking the mass of water falling into the canyon creates a permanent rainbow suspended above it.
We take about a million pictures.
After the Painter’s peak we finally are at the top of the cliff face and take a last look at the river before turning into the woods to continue on our hike.
We are soon treated to a completely different scenery of a lily pond in the middle of the woods. After the forceful beauty of the water fall the pond is peaceful and inviting.
We take in the view and continue on to arrive at a basin of mud pots that look and smell like witches’ cauldrons, fumaroles where
you hear and see steam hissing up from the middle of the Earth, small geysers that are busily boiling all around us.
Once again, I have the feeling that we have left the planet and am in some other curious world or rather inside of Brother Strugatsky’s ‘Roadside Picnic’ where you are expected to assume and quickly adapt to unexpected and where the experience changes you irrevocably and forever.
We come up to the lake that looks clean and peaceful on the surface but, if you look closely, you can see a geyser bubbling up in the middle of it.
It is hard to keep girls out of the water features but we must be careful. In the most seismically active place on Earth one must be careful where they dip their toes in.
We pass the lake and the scenery changes again. We are at the top of the sprawling prairie surrounded by mountain peaks. You can see out for miles. We cross the prairie taking in the view and the nice breeze to come back to the parking lot.
So, in one hike we climbed the cliff face over the water fall, walked through the rock formations, found hidden mud pots, geysers, lakes and
crossed a meadow. Best.hike.ever.
Tamara, who has been perusing her Junior Ranger activity books is educating us along the route about fumaroles and fissures. We are now educated and impressed.
A hike like this certainly requires an ice cream celebration which we do not wait to do. We stop by one of the lodges and eat ice cream on the benches outside watching many crows around.
The last hooray for the day is returning to the Grand Prismatic and it does not disappoint. The colors on the main geyser are vivid and geyser is so blue and inviting.
On the way back we are treated to some views of local wildlife.
We return to camp site for dinner and some more school prep as not all the passwords and logins are working still.
In Modo Grandiose , Bravissimo!