Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

This is the second post of several about Yellowstone National Park.  If you missed the first one you can find it here: Yellowstone: Geysers and Hot Springs.

While visiting the Old Faithful and Canyon Village areas of Yellowstone we stayed at Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone, Montana.  This was a really nice RV park.  It was expensive, but so is everything else anywhere near Yellowstone.  We enjoyed relaxing outside with Mom and Dad after hiking in the park all day.

The boys loved the playground.

And we enjoyed this shelter one evening to play a game of Mexican Train dominoes.

The town of West Yellowstone is super cute.  Everything is western themed.

Jake even got into the western theme and bought himself a cowboy hat!

We visited the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center where we saw several grizzlies actively playing.  The wolves were all asleep, and usually when we go to zoos the bears are usually sleeping too.  But at this place the bears were so active which made it lots of fun to watch them.

Anyway let’s talk about the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.  We parked at the Artist Point parking lot.  Artist Point is a beautiful viewpoint looking down the canyon toward Lower Falls.

Artist Point

After enjoying the view for a little while, we headed down the Rim Trail to get closer and better views of the falls.  This hike had some beautiful view points.

We went down Uncle Tom’s Trail which is a staircase with 328 steps.  Going down is easy, coming back up — not so much!  But it’s worth it because going down gives you even closer views of the canyon and falls.

After climbing back up the stairs we continued on down the Rim Trail a little further to see the Upper Falls.

This was a really nice hike and not too crowded.  Most of the crowd only comes to see the viewpoint from the Artist Point parking lot.  Hiking the trail gives you many more beautiful views without the crowds.