Yellowstone National Park,
Wyoming,
United States
Friday, September 5, 2008
Will and I walked over the visitor's center this morning and saw a large bull elk and his two cow elk and two calves. It was fun to see them so close to the hotel. Of course we took many pictures as if we have not seen any elk in Yellowstone this visit. We drove Will to Bozeman, Montana to catch a plane back to Durango, Colorado. We were sad to see him leave we all had a great time visiting and touring Yellowstone. Kevin and I will visit him in Durango for Christmas. It is still sad to say goodbye. Kevin and I have one more week of touring Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We did not get back into Mammoth Hot Springs until about 2:30 pm. One the road from Gardiner Montana to Mammoth Hot Springs we saw several bighorn sheep climbing the mountain. They were quite impressive. They can walk on the most narrow ledges and scamper up the mountain on loose rocks. And yes we took many pictures to share with you. We decided to do the Osprey Falls Trail even though we did not get to the trailhead until 4 pm. It was spitting rain when we started but then cleared about half way into the hike. This hike is about 9.2 miles. Not too bad if it was flat, however...the last 1.4 miles had a steep grade with sharp switchbacks. The grade was about 40% in some areas and the trail was very narrow. I slipped and fell on my rear end several times but this is nothing new for me. We could see the Black Canyon from our trail and it was quite impressive. Once we finally got to the bottom we were treated to a magnificent waterfall. The Osprey Falls are 200 feet high with the canyon walls towering some 300 feet high. It was just incredibly beautiful. It was starting to get dark and we knew the hike out would take longer so we headed back up the canyon. This reminded Kevin and I of the Grand Canyon hike we have done except that it is not 100 degrees today, thank goodness. The hike was particularly tough on us. We decided maybe we are just getting too old for this...no never!! Since this is prime grizzly bear territory and it was getting dark Kevin and I banged some rocks together so that we would not surprise a bear. Must have worked as we did not see any bears just two elk who seemed very interested in us. But they soon scampered away. We were glad to see the car and decided that seeing those beautiful falls was worth the pain. Tomorrow maybe we will just do some SHORT hikes.
