Our 4th day in the park began early as well – we managed to get out of Old Faithful around 6:30AM. Rather than head back to Canyon through the Madison/Norris construction, though, we elected to go south through Craig Pass, past Lake and Fishing Bridge, and up through Hayden Valley. Once again, the morning was cloudy and drizzly.
Once we got to the Canyon area, though, our luck began to change for the better. The sun came out just in time for us to get some good shots of the Lower Falls. This photo was taken from Artist Point. I personally think this is one of the most stunning sights you’ll ever encounter in nature. Trust me when I tell you that the photos just do not do this justice.
When we left Artist Point, we headed to the Uncle Tom trailhead to see the Upper Falls.
Once we were done there, we headed over to the brink of the upper falls, and then back around to the south side of the Canyon where we hiked down to the brink of the lower falls. This is a 3/8 mile, 600-foot drop of a hike that takes you to the point where you’re right over the top of where the millions of gallons of water per minute go over the falls. This is the view from one side:
This is the view from the other side. You are looking straight down into the 308 foot drop of the falls. The roar of the water is almost deafening.
As we started to hike to another vantage point, we spotted an osprey nest in the canyon. They like to build their nests on the tops of singular spires, and it is not terribly uncommon to see one, especially in the Tower Fall area. This was the first I’d seen in the Canyon itself, though. This photo is of the mother coming in for a landing with a meal for the youngling you can see in the nest awaiting her arrival.
We left the Canyon area around Noon and headed back into Hayden Valley to go back to our room at Old Faithful. About 45 minutes after we left, we heard on the scanner that a 20-year old guy had jumped over the brink of the lower falls. The rangers began a massive rescue operation that soon evolved into a recovery operation once it was decided that he wouldn’t have been able to survive. They sent aircraft up to search the canyon, and had spotters along the bridges and other crossings over the Yellowstone River, but even four days later they had not recovered his body. Supposedly his father was with him and the man jumped (as opposed to “slipped”), but as of this writing no one has confirmed specifically what happened. You can read a bit more about this HERE.
This is a photo of the observation platform that he jumped from – you can see it on the right just above the brink of the falls. The man in the yellow shirt is in the location from which I took that second photo above (the one looking straight down into the shaft of the falls).
As we drove back up the road to the OF cabin area, Nikki snapped this shot of a bison bull lounging along the road. He was less than 25 feet from us.
We had intended to get some rest and then head up to Fairy Falls for our hike. We got the nap in and headed up to the trailhead, but when we got there, there was so much traffic present they were already parking out along the main road. We decided to try again later, and headed back to Old Faithful. When we got back, we just decided to explore the Old Faithful Inn for a while. If you’ve never been in the OFI, it is a truly spectacular building.
We ate dinner at the OFI Dining Room, then went up into the mezzanine to watch people go by doing people things. Nikki got frisky about an hour after we sat down, so we headed back to our cabin for some rather raucous sex. The cabins are actually quads – four rooms to a single building, and the other three were occupied. I sure hope we didn’t disturb anyone. 
With that we called it a night, drifting off to sleep wrapped around each other. We had to get up and leave early the next morning for our walking tours of the geyser basins.
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