A tiring day - The Lake and the Canyon

Churning pit
see all photos »

Well begun is half done! We woke up early, grabbed a quick bite and as per plan reached the dock, to try some boating in the spectacular lake. We had tried it the day before and failed since the rental closed early for off-season. Eager for anything to do with water I got out of the car and hit a low lying branch hard with my head. And guess which of the two was hurt.

After some basic first aid we were on the power boat with a 40hp outboard motor and a top speed of 25 knots, not too adventerous in the calm lake. The wind was chilly and the view was beautiful. An hour in the lake was just relaxing and spectcular.

It was fantastic, yellow stones make it truely a grand canyon

Lower falls
see all photos »

After that we stopped by at the Mud Volcano. A geo-thermal region which used to be a volcano, now a continues soure of foul smellnig hydrogen disulphine. The water in the puddles is al hot as 80 degree celcius at places and the gushing gas can make churn it real hard.

The plan was to drive upto the old faithful area again to see two other predictable gysers, ones taller than old faithful but with a prediction accuracy of a few hours. It was a long drive. Structurally Yellowstone is a hexagon, with almost equal sides, each requiring about 30 minutes of driving time and we had to cover 3 sides to get there. We got there dead tired, and instead of trekking up to the gysers saw the beautiful eruption from a distance.  We were lucky enough to see two of them erupt at the same time. Not a very common occurence.

Ekta in the boat
see all photos »

Then we drove back to see the canyon. It was fantastic, yellow stones make it truely a grand canyon. There are hardly any words to describe it. I wish we could have hiked down, but there was no time and no energy. But we did check out all vantage points and enjoyed the view of the lower falls.

Then we just retired to the lodge. Vikram and I walked to the amphitheatre to see the show for the night. It was nice, beautiful pictures of wolves and how they complete ecosystem. We came back and quickly fell asleep, the drive was going to be long. We planned to start as early as 6 am. Was going to be a challenge...