Kathy & I visited Grand Canyon twice during our visit to Yellowstone. The first time was on our own, and we got there before 8:00am to avoid the crowds. We use the term “Nooners” to describe the people who start showing up to tourist locations around the time we are leaving. Yes, I know there is another connotation for that word! 😉 In a place like Yellowstone the Nooners start showing up and filling the parking lots by around 10:00am, in some places even earlier.

The canyon and the waterfalls are spectacular in any light, and we managed to get quite a few photographs, especially on the north rim where you could really see the topography. One of the things I particularly liked about the north rim is the gnarly trees growing out of the rock cliffs. They made for interesting subject matter and I’ve included just a sample here.

As we were leaving the Artist Point area, someone asked me if I knew what time the rainbow happened. It must have been obvious from the look on my face that I didn’t know anything about a rainbow. Silly me – a failure of research!

Fortunately, we returned the following day on a morning photography tour aboard one of the yellow buses. Our guide knew exactly when the rainbow would occur (about 9:40am, just in time for the Nooners! 🙂 ) and positioned us in the right spot. Not knowing when the peak color would be I made over 100 frames in order to end up with about 6. The one posted here is the only one I’ve processed so far but is typical of the others. Interestingly, the first day we visited was overcast, so we might not have seen the rainbow that day anyway!

Because it was a photography tour and not a Tom & Kathy journey, the tour only stayed long enough to capture the rainbow and didn’t travel the north rim at all. It was off to another photographic destination! I’m glad we saw the rainbow, but also glad to have visited the canyon on our own!