Yellowstone: Water and Mountains

Water of various forms represents a very important facet of Yellowstone area - numerous waterfalls, rivers and streams, ponds and lakes, and most famous of all - geysers, the steaming water.

Shortly after we entered the park from the south, we arrived at the Moose falls. Not many people stop there, we had the whole area for ourselves for 30 minutes or so, listening to the sound of rushing water, feeling the breeze, enjoying the nature. Of all the water falls at Yellowstone, the most impressive one is the lower falls on Yellowstone river, which has a height of 300feet. The water was rushing so fast and forceful, it sent mists into the air forming a light fog. As we went down to the bottom of the fall via Uncle Tom's trail, we saw rainbows!

In addition to Yellowstone river, the larger rivers include the Firehole river which originated from geyser basin. The snake river runs through Yellowstone, and the most beautiful scenery along the river is at its Grand Teton section. We had white water rafting the first day at Grand Teton National Park.

The biggest lake is Yellowstone lake. It is huge and the water is crystal clear. It is so huge we decided to drive a motor boat instead of our usual favorite kayaking. At one corner of the Yellowstone lake, there is a large marsh land - which is said to be bears favorite place, but we did not see any bears there. There are so many ponds we did not even try to remember their names, except the beavers pond - because a trail we hiked is named beavers pond trail and we actually saw beaver's dam and a beaver swimming in the pond just for minute or two when we hiked there.

The most famous form of water there is geyser. After touring the geyser basin, we could appreciate how amazing it is that Old Faithful erupts regularly. Among the less famous geysers, this long horn like dormant geyser caught my eyes. Geysers are amazing, but they smell big time.

The pictures listed below are 1) old faithful- one of its smaller eruption I caught on camera, 2) a dormant geyser, 3) steamboat geyser - what shown in the picture is not a eruption, it was a continuous steam from the boiling geyser, 4) water seeping out of rocks from one side of Calderon geyser

The mountains at Yellowstone are not high. They, along with blue sky, white clouds, remnant of glaciers, lakes, trees and green vegetation, form a beautiful tapestry of Yellowstone.