Vacation Recap: Day 3

On Thursday we spent most of our day around Yellowstone's Canyon.  There are two waterfalls in the Canyon:  Lower Falls and Upper Falls.  The Canyon follows Yellowstone River and is 20 miles long, 1000 feet deep, and 2500 feet wide. There are a lot of trails that take you close to the top of the falls, or you can take different trails to give you more of an overlook view.  We did a lot of them, but here are just a few of the views we had of the waterfalls and canyon.

standing right next to the top of Lower Falls

view of the canyon from Lower Falls

overlook of Lower Falls

ok in this next picture I've put arrows pointing to this diagonal line (maybe click on the picture to make it larger) that is a very steep set of stairs.  This trail and all of these steps is known as Uncle Tom's Trail.  It takes you 3/4 of the way down into the canyon to give you an awesome view of Lower Falls.

the steps of Uncle Tom's Trail from across the Canyon

Later in the day we went to the other side of the canyon and hiked down Uncle Tom's Trail.  The steps were SO steep and basically hanging over nothing! Which was really scary!  Going down I just looked at my feet so I didn't freak myself out. It was totally worth it once we got to the bottom, though!  Going back up was a different story: it was so steep and there were so many stairs, and climbing hundreds of stairs at 8,000 feet of elevation was a bit much for me.  I was literally gasping for air and my legs were still burning like two days later.  But it was fun, and we would definitely recommend it to anyone who goes to Yellowstone!

view of Lower Falls from Uncle Tom's Trail

we were so close to the falls!

After Uncle Tom's Trail we went to Artist's Point, which we heard was the best view of the canyon.  We would have to agree!

view from Artist's Point

After we left the Canyon area we went to Tower Falls.  We were disappointed that the trail to the bottom of the falls was closed, due to water and the trail being washed out.

Tower Falls

my first time seeing elk!

On our way back to the inn at the end of the day, we drove by Yellowstone Lake to get a view of something different.  It was very pretty, but basically your typical lake.  We decided we didn't want to spend any time there because we've been to other lakes.  We did stop at this mud volcano though - so weird!

mud volcano

We hadn't originally planned to spend so much time at the Canyon, but once we were there we decided we wanted to keep going down different trails!  There are beautiful views everywhere we looked!

(see part 1 of our trip here and part 2 here!)