Tower Falls Area

When we took our big vacation to Yellowstone in 2010, some days we packed as much into 24 hours as we possibly could. Every morning we'd get up at dawn and go until we were exhausted. Every night we'd all collapse into bed and fall immediately to sleep to get ready for the next day.

One especially full day was spent around the Tower Falls area. That was the day we took a soak in the hot spring along the Gardiner River. But later we headed out for all kinds of sight-seeing and hiking. Here's just a small portion of the stuff we saw that day:

Tower Falls from one of the overlooks.

Heck with it, I figured. I'm hiking down there!

You can really see the soft stuff that makes up much of the underlying material in Yellowstone. It's obvious that the place was just a huge caldera full of exploded rock and dust. The rivers cut through it like it's soft chalk. Which, basically, it almost is.

I enjoyed this hike to the river. It was peaceful down in the gorge--almost no other people were there. All I had to do was hike back up. Of course that wasn't nearly as tough a hike as climbing out of Linville Gorge.

Later, we traveled to a hot springs area that had some petrified trees. A number of them were standing as they must have been when volcanic ash covered them. They had this one fenced off to keep souvenir hunters from carrying it away, piece by piece.

And after that, we toured a tremendous thermal area with all sorts of bubbling springs and roaring formations screaming thunder and steam.

Rescued Swallow

One of the first hot springs we visited was a really nice one called "Old Caliente". It was a classic hot spring. It boiled and bubbled and splashed and steamed and flowed down a terrace into a cold river.

Here I am standing in front of Old Caliente.

As we wandered around the place, Andy was curious if you could wade into the river below the hot spring terrace and find a spot where the boiling spring water mixed with the icy cold river water and made for some warm temperatures just right for soaking one's feet. So he pulled off his shoes and went in, finding just such a comfort zone. (This was days before we visited Boiling River.)

After a while, another tourist pointed out something in the water. "Is that a turtle?" the guy asked Andy. Since Andy was already wading around in the water, he shuffled over to see what it was. It was stuck in the water weeds well out in the river where the water was frigidly cold--about 50 degrees or so. Bending over, Andy saw that it wasn't a turtle, but the head of a little bird--a swallow--just sticking up. The little guy was about half-drowned and struggling to keep its beak above water.

So Andy picked it up, carefully cradled it in his hands and brought it ashore.

These swallows are bug-eaters. I think what happened was that it was diving, or maybe skimming along the river and just fell in. And it got stuck in the weeds. You aren't supposed to muck about with the wildlife, but we made an exception. The little fellow (or gal) was almost totally exhausted. It could barely pick up its head from having tried to keep from drowning for who knows how long before Andy found it.

We ended up putting it in the meadow beside a log so that it could recuperate (hopefully) and get itself airborne again. In retrospect, maybe we should have taken it to the car and held it in front of the heater vent for a while, but as I said you're really not supposed to mess with the wildlife in the park. We had already done enough to get ourselves in trouble, I reckon.

But I'd like to think we saved the little bird so that it could hunt bugs and live longer.


The tiny bird was totally exhausted from trying to keep its head above water in the terribly cold river. I hope it recovered. It could barely keep its eyes open while Andy was holding it.