Did you know that there is a huge canyon at Yellowstone that is called the “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone”?  We didn’t.  We visited it yesterday and it’s VERY impressive!  The Yellowstone River runs through it and has carved it over a long time.  There are two waterfalls at the beginning of the canyon and there are several viewpoints to see the beautiful formations and colors along the canyon.  Several of the viewpoints are down 800+ steps…and since we were at 8,000ft already Jeff and I decided not to attempt those.  We were out of breath just walking on level ground!

In the photo just below, notice the large white area on the cliff – it’s a shelf of snow!  At this altitude there was still some snow on the ground as well!

At one viewpoint a man was sitting with a large telephoto camera and was looking through it and then taking notes.  We discovered he was studying an Osprey in a nest high on the tip of a formation.  We got a fairly good photo of it with our telephoto lens and it’s included in the set of photos below.

We also saw a mud volcano and sulphur caldron – boy was it stinky!!!  The yellow coloring around several of the pits is pure sulphur.

And, while driving through a meadow we saw a couple of elk, both with nice antlers.  Got a couple of pictures of them.   We again saw lots of bison and at one place a ranger was directing traffic around a big male who was walking right in the middle of the street!  But, we have tons of bison photos so we didn’t hold up traffic this time 🙂

Here are some photos: