On our final day in the park, we do the activities we enjoy the most: explore landmarks and hike. The road south takes us through the Golden Gate. Cliffs gilded with bright yellow lichen seem to squeeze the road. This is a new sensation. Until now, the landscape offered views that were expansive, stretching far across the horizon. On the Grand Loop Road, we've traveled through lodgepole pine forests, alpine meadows and near-desert vegetation, but now we drive through a stretch of almost-barren, yellow rock mountains.

The forest returns and we stop at Sheepeater Cliff, a name derived from early inhabitants, the Tukudikas. At Obsidian Cliff, we learn that American Indians once quarried the black volcanic glass for arrow points.

We launch into a hike to wind-whipped Grizzly Lake. We don't see cinnamon-colored bears as we walk through patches of rejuvenating lodgepole pine. Tree trunks lie at obtuse angles on the forest floor, remnants of the 1988 fire. On a mountaintop, tall grasses shelter a pocket of glacier lilies.

A small museum housed in the historic 1908 Norris Soldier Station tells about the role and contributions of rangers in the National Park Service. The U.S. Army supervised park operations for 30 years before creation of the NPS. Rangers' headgear resembles the Army "doughboy" hat.

Superlatives rule at Norris Geyser Basin. Yellowstone's most active, hottest and loudest geysers are here. Steamboat Geyser is the tallest. It shoots steam up 300 to 400 feet high. Nobody knows when it will show its power. We can't wait for the display, and reluctantly leave to follow the Gibbon and Madison rivers to the West Yellowstone gate.

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E-mail: Contact travel editor Linda Lange of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.