Beauty Pool, in Yellowstone, sure is a beauty

Beauty Pool, in Yellowstone's Upper Geyser Basin, reflects the sky in this wide angle image taken July 31, 2019. You can get to it by starting out from the the Old Faithful area and hiking along the boardwalk on the east side of the Firehole River. It's just north of Grand Geyser, another feature worth watching. Beauty Pool is connected to the nearby feature called Chromatic Spring. When one of these features has their water rise and overflow, the water level in the other decreases. This back-and-forth between the two can take weeks or even years.

We were lucky to have no wind despite the cloudy conditions, so the reflection of the clouds turned out as we hoped. To fit the whole pool in the image, we used a wide-angle lens on a smartphone. It's capable of capturing images of 180º and 360º. This image was captured with 180º setting and edited for levels, local contrast, and sharpened.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story!

Cave Falls from downstream, southeastern corner of Yellowstone National Park

We finally visited the harder-to-get-to southeastern corner of Yellowstone National Park known as the Bechler Region in August 2019.  Because of the many waterfalls and cascades in this corner of Yellowstone, it's also called Cascade Corner.

The highlight for us was visiting Cave Falls along the Fall River.  We posted an image earlier of the view of Cave Falls from the brink.  This view is from downstream.  The boulders on the left margin just below the falls are from the collapse of the alcove that gave Cave Falls its name.  So, these falls got its name from an alcove and not a true cave.  The characteristic that distinguishes this waterfall is that they are the widest waterfall of all of Yellowstone's many waterfalls at 250 feet across.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Robinson Twins Exploring Millerton Cave

In these two combined images, Rick and Bob are exploring Millerton Cave, located in eastern Fresno County, California. It's perhaps one of the best examples of a talus cave (also called corrasional cave) in the world. Rick is in the left image hoping to locate a small waterfall inside the cave. Bob is in the right image recording video of the inside of the cave while Rick provides the lighting. We've been to this cave several times but have yet to explore all of it. It's estimated to be 1/2 mile (.8 km) in length. It's located on public land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management called the San Joaquin River Gorge. It's also upstream of the Millerton Lake State Park. For those exploring it, there are some bolts already drilled into the granite at some of the natural entrances.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story!

Upper Yosemite Falls from the trail

In Yosemite National Park, you can see the tallest waterfall in America. Yosemite Falls, has an upper section, a middle cascading section, then a lower fall. There's a trail that leads to the top of the falls so you can look down on the entire falls behind a guard rail. This image was taken from along that trail showing just the upper falls. We've been to the top of the falls and have posted a video about that day trip to our YouTube channel, Robinson Twins Natural Adventures.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story!