We continued driving from Sulphur Caldron to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which has a drive along a portion of each rim. Today we took the North Rim to see the Lower Falls, and will see the other side tomorrow which has a good view of the Upper Falls.

We had beautiful views of the very open Hayden Valley and meandering Yellowstone River, with headwaters at Yellowstone Lake. It has no dams on it and becomes a tributary of the Missouri. That is 692 miles of uninterrupted river providing lots of trout fishing.

There is a nice paved path with switchbacks from the first big parking lot down to the Brink of Lower Falls. It drops 600 feet in 0.38 miles, which makes it a heart/lung challenge to come back up. Because it is a paved path, and descends first, it seems easy and many people take it without accounting for coming back up. Fortunately there are lots of places to rest for those who overestimate their fitness.

This is a beautiful , youthful canyon having formed 20,000 years ago with colorful rock showing areas where the rhyolite lava flow has broken down, “rusted” into clay minerals. We’ll get a better view of these colors tomorrow from the southern rim. This young canyon is deep because it had ice dams giving way and earthquake-triggered tsunamis in Yellowstone Lake helping the river carve it. We pulled into Inspiration Point for lunch.

Back to Fishing Bridge for a second night’s stay. We ate sandwiches in the gift shop for supper, and I had a very sweet Huckleberry pop with my black bean burger. Huckleberry everything is featured in the gift shops. Huckleberries grow at high elevations, and bears love them, too.

As we took a path down to the shore, I thought I saw a head sticking out of the water under the bridge. It didn’t make sense to be a bear, and I couldn’t see any ears. I looked several times, but couldn’t quite make it out. As we walked back to Usain, there was a young man, dripping wet, in just swim trunks hurrying to his car. He kept looking back over his shoulder like he expected trouble—there is no swimming allowed here. Now I wondered if he was what I saw under the bridge. He did have long hair and fit the profile shape. All kinds of interesting people in national parks:)