Yellowstone NP: Canyon Area, Wyoming - June 14th, 2021
On Monday, we headed into Yellowstone National Park. Our original plan was to spend nine nights inside the park, but an unplanned family event caused us to reduce it down to three nights. For all three nights, we would be camping in Mammoth Campground near the north entrance of the park. To make the most of our three days in Yellowstone, we decided to concentrate each day on a different area of the park. On day one, it was the canyon area on our way from Colter Bay Campground in Grand Teton National Park to Mammoth Campground in Yellowstone.
In order to maximize our time, we got up at 6:30 am and were on the road by 7:15 am. We had heard stories about people waiting in long lines to enter Yellowstone. We reached the entrance before 8 am. There was only one line open, but there were only three cars in front of us. We’re not sure if the lack of a line was due to our early timing or due to the south entrance not being a popular entrance to the park.
Yellowstone’s main roads form a figure eight. Before we reached the bottom loop, we made a quick stop at Lewis Falls. It was pretty, but not spectacular. Yellowstone has so much more to offer. However, it was a good excuse to get out of the van and stretch our legs. We took the eastern side of the bottom loop to get to the canyon area. The road follows along the western side of Yellowstone Lake. It is a huge lake with mountain peaks on the other side.
Our first major stop was at Mud Volcano. A short boardwalk made a loop around the thermal features. The smell of sulphur was in the air, but it was not overpowering. Informational signs dotted the trail. Bubbling, steaming muddy ponds were interspersed with venting fumaroles. A bison lay in the shade close by.
As we continued our drive towards the canyon area, we passed quite a few bison out in the wide-open meadows along the way. We reached North Rim Drive in Canyon Village at about 10:30 am. The parking area near the Brink of Lower Falls Trailhead was pretty full, but we managed to take a spot just as someone left.
We hiked down to the Brink of Lower Falls. It is less than mile, but pretty steep. The trail was pretty crowded. After we completed that, we decided to take the North Rim Trail over to the Brink of the Upper Falls. The North Rim Trail branches off from the Brink of the Lower Falls trail at one of the first switch backs.
There was not as many people on this trail. It went by Crystal Falls. You cannot really see Crystal Falls well from where the trail crosses over the stream, but there is an overlook about a quarter of a mile further down the trail. The North Rim Trail ends in the parking lot for the Brink of the Upper Falls.
The trail to the Upper Falls is much shorter and not as steep as the one down to the Lower Falls. You can see more of the falls from the brink of the Upper Falls than the brink of the Lower Falls, but the best view of the Upper Falls is probably from the south rim of the canyon.
After we returned from the Brink of the Upper Falls, we ate lunch in our van. After getting more fuel in our bodies, we got back on the North Rim Trail in the other direction. At Lookout Point, we headed down the trail to Red Rock Point. We didn’t realize that the Red Rock Point trail was just about as steep and long as the Brink of the Lower Falls Trail. The views of the Lower Falls from Red Rock Point were worth it, though. We definitely got our workout in for the day.
We counted all of our hiking in the canyon area as one hike. Hike #19 of our 52 Hike Challenge and hike #17 of our National Park Series was 4.3 miles total with an elevation gain of 948 feet in two and a half hours.
Stopping at the Canyon Village grocery store, we discovered that Yellowstone does not carry Coke products, only Pepsi. We settled for a couple of bottles of Pepsi for our caffeine to get us through the rest of the drive to Mammoth Campground. There was a traffic jam at Canyon Junction, but we were able to bypass some of it since we were going straight through the intersection to head west towards Norris while most people were turning south. The road north from Canyon to Tower is closed for construction. At Norris, we headed north on the west side of the upper loop of the figure eight to reach Mammoth.
We arrived at the campground at about 3:30 pm. It was hot and our camp site had no shade. We put out our power awning again. It was a little breezy, so we tied the awning down to the heavy picnic table with ratchet straps for extra insurance. The awning did not provide enough shade to sit in, but it shaded the van. We opened up the back doors of the van and sat down in our camp chairs in the shade of our van. Around 7:30 pm, the sun dropped below the hillside next to our site to give us shade. Then the temperature quickly dropped down to a much more comfortable level. We headed to bed early so we could get an early start the next day when we would tackle the Old Faithful area of the park.
Day one of three was in the books and we felt like we did the Canyon area justice. Of course there is more to see there, but we didn’t want to run ourselves ragged trying to see it all. We just have to keep telling ourselves that we will be back.
Check out our related video: Yellowstone NP: Canyon Area, Wyoming
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