Yellowstone: Grand Canyon Area

Mark, Bailey, and I spent a day hiking in Yellowstone. Sawyer opted to stay home and hang out with girls. Psh...whatever! It was foggy and rainy, but it made everything look so cool! I've been wanting to hike the Grand Canyon section for a long time. It was as awesome as I was hoping it would be! Bailey hasn't been there since she was young, so she didn't remember most of it. She was fascinated by the hydrothermal stuff, and we didn't even see the good spots for that. We already have lots of other hikes and touring planned for our next few trips up there. Good thing we have a park pass, because I think I'm obsessed. Yellowstone has never ending, beautiful hikes, and I want to do them all! 

Our first stop was Gibbon Falls on the way to the Grand Canyon area. So pretty!

We took a short detour to the Artist Paint Pots. This was a fun area with lots of hydrothermal stuff going on.

These pots were thick and milky looking. They were spitting up the white mud (or whatever it is) pretty high in the air. Bailey thought it was so cool. I can't wait to take her back and show her the really pretty colorful ones! 

Artist Paint Pots 

The weather was awesome! It was nice and cool, the fog made everything look awesome, and the rain was light enough to be fun, not annoying.

 We made it to the South Rim, and parked the car at the Upper Falls viewing area. We hiked the whole south rim, and made a fun loop back to the car. It was about 5 miles. We love hiking! You can see things and get to places most people never get to see.

Upper Falls 

We descended about a million stairs on Uncle Tom's Trail to get to a great viewing area of the Lower Falls. Coming back up wasn't as fun, but totally worth it! 

This is the view up the canyon from Uncle Tom's Trail.

I took a TON of pictures, but I couldn't help it! Look at that view! 

Artist Point- This is the exact spot that initiated Bailey's fear of lightening lots of years back. Good thing we didn't have any on this trip! 

On our way to Point Sublime. 

We were looping back to the car and passed Lily Pad Pond. It was the cutest little pond. The whole top was covered in lily pads, except the spots that were bubbling from the thermal stuff going on.

We passed Clear Lake along the way too. We were messing with the pano setting on our cameras so we could get a picture of the whole lake. Hahaha, check out this gem of a picture!

 When we got done hiking the south rim, we drove across the river to the north rim and did all those viewpoints.

We were standing on top of the waterfalls! The pictures don't do it justice, but it was so powerful! This was a really cool viewpoint. 

This is the view up the canyon from the top of the waterfall. We were up pretty high, and we could still see all the spray and mist from the falls. So cool!

 We didn't see a lot of animals on the way in (probably because of the rain), so we stopped on the way out to see a herd of elk. There were cute babies in the herd, and they started walking right toward us and bugling. We turned around and saw the mom coming down the hill on the other side of the road. The traffic was stopped in both directions as the babies crossed the road. They nursed for a while, and then crossed back over and rejoined all the others. So cute!

We had a great adventure, and can't wait to go back!