Yellowstone National Park

Happy 100th Birthday to the National Park Service!!

It seemed fitting that my first watercolor for the National Park series would be of our first National Park!!

Yellowstone National Park was established in1872, before the states that now surround it became part of the Union.  Covering just under 3500 square miles, it's one of the biggest parks in the USA.  I read that if you drive on every road in the park, you'll only cover 1%!  My daughter Katie and I visited there just a few weeks ago and as always I am just blown away by the sheer beauty of this park, each quadrant different from the next.  Forests, plains and canyons and then theres the awe and wonder of the thermal activity: geysers, mud pots and hot springs that pop up in the most unusual places. Not to mention the waterfalls!!   It is all so varied and magnificent.  God's handiwork is everywhere!

This sketch is one of the iconic views of the Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  It was considered THE Grand Canyon, until another one in Arizona became a park in 1919!  It is actually an ancient geyser basin, and over millennia the hot water and chemical weakened the bedrock changing the shape and colors to what you see today.

To learn more about Yellowstone National Park visit:

https://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm