Rubble: On the Second Day, Rain… (And Tower Fall!)

Thursday, September 04, 2014

On the Second Day, Rain… (And Tower Fall!)

A. F. Litt: Yellowstone National Park &emdash; Tower Falls Showing Its Rainbow

Tower Fall Showing Its Rainbow
Yellowstone National Park. August 1, 2014
Copyright © 2014 A. F. Litt, All Rights Reserved

Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: September 4, 2014

On our second full day in Yellowstone, our afternoon was rained out, but not before we headed north from the campground to check out Tower Fall. I am used to waterfalls being named in the plural, “falls,” but the official name here, designated by the U. S. Geological Survey in 1928, is Tower Fall. It is the second most popular waterfall in the park, after Lower Falls, but I am not really sure what that means.

Wikipedia has some nice art of the falls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Fall

Now, honestly, since I pretty much live in the Columbia River Gorge, my family and I are getting almost obnoxiously jaded about waterfalls. Lower Falls, arguably, is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world, and yes, that one impressed us, but this one is, well… It is a very nice waterfall with some interesting pinnacles, old fossilized fumaroles, thrusting up above it.

But let’s face it- we didn’t go to Yellowstone to look at waterfalls!

Due to getting our reservations rather late, we needed to relocate for the third night, so we jammed down to Lewis Lake to grab a spot. Unfortunately, the afternoon thunderstorms we dealt with for most of the trip decided to camp down there as well.

Being good Oregonians, we busted out the tarps and books and settled in for a restful afternoon, though it did set our schedule back a bit later on, leading to a long catch up run late into the evening a couple days later, racing across the country trying to keep caught up with our reservations.

But a little rest was a good thing…