As our day in Yellowstone drew to a close, I decided to watch the daylight slip away and night descend over nearby Lake Yellowstone.  As you may recall, our first look at the lake early in the day left us in awe; as you’ll soon see, the extended time I spent at the lake at the end of the day only deepened my awe.

The sun was still descending when I arrived at the lake, but the partly cloudy sky provided a much different look from the one we’d gotten under clear skies earlier in the day.

It didn’t take long for dusk to set in, and that provided an opportunity for yet another look.

After watching the change from daylight to night over the lake, my final goal was to see — and, if all went well, to capture on memory card — the moonrise over Lake Yellowstone.  With the sky becoming noticeably more cloudy, I became concerned that I might not see the moon at all.  Happily, though, the clouds served not to hide the moonrise, but instead to make it even more spectacular than I’d hoped it would be: the cloud cover most courteously left a gap between itself and the horizon, and before long, I found myself gazing at a stunningly gorgeous moonrise.

After a few minutes, the moon began to slip behind the clouds, and that’s when they did their part to make it even more spectacular: the moon itself disappeared, but its light continued to illuminate the distant mountains.

Even after the clouds hid the moon, I didn’t go back to the cabin; I found it too difficult to tear myself away from the vast near-silence of Lake Yellowstone on a calm summer evening.  Though I would return to the park in a heartbeat if given the chance, I knew there was no guarantee I’d ever again have the privilege of visiting Yellowstone, so I wanted to spend every possible minute soaking in the majesty of God’s creation.

Eventually the long day of walk and awe caught up with me, and though I wanted to spend even just another hour or two under the night sky on the shores of Lake Yellowstone, I knew I had to go to bed.  I packed up my camera and reluctantly returned to the cabin, but I did so with an immeasurably valuable new set of memories (and, of course, a few photos).