Day 3 at Yellowstone National Park

On day 3 at YNP we headed north from the Grand Canyon area, stopped by Tower Falls and hoofed all about Mammoth Hot Springs before finally exiting the park from the North Entrance and heading to Missoula to sleep the night.

Here's that map again so you have an idea of where we were:




When we got up in the morning, it was freezing. I believe that the Canyon area is at a much higher elevation than the area of the park we were in previously. Regardless, there was frost on the trees and a little snow on the ground. Keep in mind that a few weeks earlier we had been snorkeling in Key West...



Carson..."Nature Girl." Haven't seen that shirt again since, ha.



Here's a little random geothermal activity a few miles off.



Here is some of the amazing landscape around the Tower Falls area.







The Tower Falls itself was apparently not impressive enough to get a pic uploaded to Flickr by me, hmmm. I'll have to look into that. Anyway, we moved on to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, which is another amazing spot complete with boardwalks for easy hiking about. Mammoth is different from the other geothermal areas in Yellowstone in that there are no geysers, however, the water that is coming out of the springs contains massive amounts of calcium, which cover everything around springs in white calcium rock and build up and up creating a massive white hill.

Here's the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel with one of the typical National Park tour vehicles you see everywhere up here (and at Glacier).





Seriously, that IS a Mammoth Hot Spring...



Minerva Terrace, a famous feature -





Complete with colorful pools of super hot water, colorful bacteria & algae, and tons of calcium at the top of the Mammoth Hot Springs.







Every day in Yellowstone was amazing. I could have stayed for a week and never ceased being awed by what I experienced. I WILL go back to check out the rest of the popular spots there, and then I'll hike into a bit of the easier back country, too. But for this trip, three days in Yellowstone was all we had. We made the best of it and brought out memories that we'll keep forever. Carson was totally blown away, not that I wasn't, but I had seen pictures and had big expectations whereas she had none. It was just amazing.

To everyone who hasn't been: Go there go there go there!!