Yellowstone-Day 1 Canyon Village

I hope that you read my introduction post about our Yellowstone & Grand Teton trip!

Because we got so much in on our trip, I thought it may be more useful to break each day up too.  If you want to get all the details, be sure to read it here.

We started off our first day in West Yellowstone. I found a cute little cabin on Hebgen Lake at the Yellowstone Holiday Campground, so we entered Yellowstone using the west entrance.  We drove all the way to the Canyon Village area.
Our first stop was the North Rim.  We chose to do this first thing in the morning, as it gets busy pretty quick.

When we entered the North Rim Scenic Drive, we found parking at Look Out Point and decided which trails we were going to hike.

We decided to hike the Red Rock Point Trail.  This trail was a 1 mile round trip that gave us an amazing view of the Lower Falls.  To access it, don’t park in the first parking lot you see, drive about 1/4 mile to the next one.  That’s where you’ll find the trail.

Next stop was the Brink of the Upper Falls.  I loved it, because we ended up at the top of the waterfall.  It was an easy hike, literally right off the parking lot, down some steps.

From there our next stop was Artist Point.  We had to wait in line for quite some time just to get a parking spot, (we ended up eating our packed lunches while we waited) but it was well worth the wait!  This was my FAVORITE view in the entire park.  If you look at my picture, you will see why!  No hike was involved, again just right off the parking lot, and you’ll get this view!

Just when you thought that we had enough views of waterfalls, nope…time for a secret hike to Little Gibbon Falls.  This trail was barely visible, and it seems like not many know it’s there, so it was a great way to get away from the crowds.

We definitely brought our bear spray for this one.  It took us through a beautiful meadow to reach a stunning waterfall.  It was 1.2 miles round trip
 
 

Now on to Norris Geyser Basin for our first up close look at geysers.  It is the home of the world’s largest geyser and there is a nice boardwalk so you can experience even more.  There was a ranger in front of the largest geyser, which was very knowledgeable.  I love learning!

On our way back to the west entrance, we stopped at Gibbon Falls, which is visible right from the road.  Did I mention that I LOVE waterfalls?

For dinner we ate at Wild West Pizza, and of course we had to try a local favorite, the “Butch Cassidy” Pizza.  It was loaded with baked beans, BBQ sauce, shredded pork and red onion.  It was actually quite good!  And off to bed we went, and boy did we sleep well!

Read Day 2 of our journey here as we head to the Old Faithful area and beyond.