Yellowstone Lake, Fishing Bridge

After the canyon and the grass garden (I mean mud volcano), we arrived Saturday at the Fishing Bridge area of Yellowstone. The campground here contains an RV park, which means we were separated from all of the tent campers and that it was essentially a parking lot surrounded by forest. We had driven over the namesake bridge on the way in, so decided to take the short hike back to it -- better than sitting around a "parking lot", right?

On the way we crossed the road and stopped at the visitor center, took a quick look out back and were delighted to find that the lake was right here -- somehow we had the impression we'd have to walk farther to see it!

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I've already said that Yellowstone is big. Yellowstone Lake is right in scale with the rest of the park, as it's the largest high-elevation lake in the US. I can't remember its specifications, except that it's over 400 feet (122m) deep at some point!

We spent a bit of time here, just sitting and watching. We had a great view of the "Alder" forest fire which was burning on a southern peninsula across the lake:

That was nothing though compared to the "Alum" fire to the west:

Wow. This fire was about 10 miles (16km) away so there was no danger from it, but it was still impressive and a bit scary, with the smoke billowing up and over us. I believe at the time the fire was about 500 acres in size (as I write this it's burned over 7000 acres and is quite close to the mud volcano area).

The sand here was not the best I've ever seen, but not bad for a mountain lake:

We didn't stay as long as we wanted to, as we still wanted to see the bridge. So off we went for the short walk to the bridge itself:

That's the Yellowstone River about 11 miles from where it hits the canyon that we visited earlier in the morning -- the river runs out of the lake.

Here's a great example of the next generations of trees:

Almost like a family photo, with the youngest in front!

On to the bridge...

I'm not sure why I didn't take any photos from the top of the bridge. The structure was built in 1937, and doesn't show many signs of age -- this bridge is sturdy!

It's also quite beautiful. You don't see many timber bridges these days, do you?

The water was beautiful, and I was compelled to snap a few photos (as always):

After accidentally being in the right place at the time a ranger talk was scheduled to start, we heard about the plight of the cutthroat trout in the lake, how they're being wiped out by the non-native and much larger lake trout. You can read more about this situation here, and also here.

A couple of hours around the bridge and we decided to head back, but we'd hang out at the lake a bit more:

Couldn't resist taking more photos of the smoke too:

So menacing, even if it's not threatening anybody!

That concluded a very busy Saturday for us, as it was always nice to get back to the RV for some evening quiet time with the cats.

Next up: we drive to the Madison area in the morning.

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