The woods were becomingly white, and the pine trees had white highlights on their windward sides. I finally succumbed and stopped so I could make a snoball.

Some of the snow, of course, was old leftovers from the winter.

Our first stop was Yellowstone Canyon. We spent most of our time on trails around the Lower Falls.

The Lower Falls are in distance.

There are many pullouts and several trails. The first one took us down twelve switchbacks for a closer view on the north side (this isn't that view, though). Claire also took video of the falls.

A man we talked to on the first trail mentioned seeing metal steps on the opposite canyone wall, so we looked at a map and drove around to the south side of the Lower Falls and took Uncle Tom's trail downward. Here Claire is on the stairs.

The name comes from a fellow named (unexpectedly) Tom, who had set up a wooden stairway that he took visitors on. The park replaced them with metal.

At the base of the stairs, we got this view of the falls. The outcropping on the right side of the top of the falls is where the first trail had taken us.

Looking over the edge of the rail you could see a rainbow.

This is the view we had going back up the stairs.

We continued around to the Upper Falls for a quick look, then started back west and south (Yellowstone is quite big, so it always took a long time to get places) towards Old Faithful. We were slowed up a bit by the appearance of some road buffalo.

And their calf.

But we passed them eventually.

Only to stop to look at some elk (unpictured), a black bear (a new species for Claire and also unpictured), and this coyote, which may have been the same beggar as we had seen the day before.

We detoured on a little two-mile side road through Firehole Canyon and past this, Firehole Falls.

We paused at the Lower Geyser Basin for a short walk past the Fountain Paint Pots (not as impressive as the Artist's Paint Pots) and saw this gyeser erupt. I'm sure I'm spelling it wrong, but I'll call it Cypredian Geyser. We ate lunch at the Old Faithful village area (there's a big hotel and lots of amenities), and caught the last thirty seconds of an eruption. It wasn't a big deal, since we'd both seen it before.

We continued south, across the Continental Divide (twice) and through the most scenic snowy areas we'd seen yet.

The other side of the meadow.

A lot of the road leading to the south exit looked like this.

Our last stop in the park was an overlook of Yellowstone Lake.

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