Pictures from my 2004 Yellowstone trip

These were all taken during my 2004 Yellowstone trip, which occurred in early September. These pictures were all taken with my Minolta DiMAGE 7Hi camera, and these pictures have been resized down from their original size... I used a little under three gigabytes of flash memory during the trip.
You can click each thumbnail for a larger version of the image.

It was Warren's turn to plan this year and he decided to rent a popup trailer and pull it with his truck. The idea was to bask in the luxury of a central campsite instead of hauling everything with us like we'd done in years past. I have to admit, it sure seemed like a good idea at the time. Although the MPG numbers going downhill were a lot better, as usual the whole idea of a "luxurious" man-trip probably didn't really work out like he planned.

Of course even with a base camp Warren still did most of the work while I fooled around with my camera... no big surprise there, but I did catch him taking a few breaks.

One crimp in the whole "luxury" bit was that although we've crossed many bodies of water on previous Man Trips® this was the first that we had to cross most of them on foot. These are the Soda Butte Creek crossing point and several of many times we crossed the Bechler (pronounced Bek-ler) river and its tributaries.

Did I mention that later in the day we crossed the Bechler river again in the dark?
Friendship is hiking 6 miles in the dark through bear country... Thanks Warren.
On the plus side I did get some great pictures of the Colonnade Falls.

I also got some reasonable pictures of other waterfalls, these are the Lower and Upper Falls on the Yellowstone River, Undine Falls on Lava Creek, and a small tributary of Soda Butte Creek.

Other scenes from our trip...

We saw a number of geothermal areas while hiking and driving. We noticed that the one thing the guide books fail to mention is the smell of these things... I certainly got my supply of Hydrogen Sulfide for the year. One interesting thing about the areas is that they often have a dead zone around them, not even parking lots are safe from their power.

As usual we met a few locals, for the record they are:
Female and male Elk, a Pronghorn, Bison, a Hawk looking for its next meal, a sparrow doing the same, a Chipmunk, a Great Grey Owl, a female Mule Deer, a Grouse, and Grey Squirrels.