There was a thunderstorm last night, but apparently Joey slept right through the whole thing… We woke up to a very wet surrounding campsite, but luckily we didn’t get wet at all (thanks Marmot!). We woke up early to go to Hayden Valley to watch some wildlife feeding in their natural habitat!
There were already so many people there when we arrived, equipped with the finest monocular and/or binoculars on the market! When we parked our car, everyone was looking in the same direction, but we couldn’t see anything. We whipped out our handy-dandy binoculars and Joey finally saw a bison from afar, surrounded by a pack of four wolves! Something was about to go down…
The bison began to dig a mound into what seemed like a protective wall between itself and the body of water. Three of the four wolves dispersed, an elk wandered into the picture, and everyone ended up going their separate way, including us. We wanted to drive both “Rim Drives” of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon and chose to start with the South Rim Drive to see Upper and Lower Falls, which are located in the Canyon Village area (where we are camping tonight). We first drove to Artist Point, which gave us amazing views of Lower Falls and Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon, but from a distance…we had to get closer! Lower Falls (308 ft.) is actually a larger fall than Upper Falls (109 ft.)…but they’re both stunning!
Uncle Tom’s Trail and Point gave us even better views of Upper Falls.
We then drove towards the North Rim Drive to check out the Brink of Upper and Lower Falls, where people can get up close and personal to these amazing bodies of water! From the North Rim, we also saw breathtaking views of the Grand Canyon.
After seeing the falls, both from afar and up close, we drove north towards Mammoth Hot Springs to see this HUGE spring and take a dip in the Gardner River, but where it meets the Boiling River. The Boiling River is a sulfur river that flows from Mammoth Hot Springs. It warms the ice-cold river, and depending on where you choose to swim, it can create safe (supposedly) and natural Jacuzzi pools. We probably would’ve been just fine swimming in the Gardner River because of how hot it was today, but the cold water was refreshing and the hot stream was so unique!
After a nice and much needed dip in the water, we got lunch in Canyon Village and did a little souvenir shopping (it is Yellowstone after all and it’s actually Yellowstone’s 100th birthday along with the National Park Service because it was the first National Park in 1916)! We sat next to a young family while we were eating lunch at a cute little diner in Canyon Village,. We’ve found that the most common question asked when meeting a new person at a National Park is: “Where are you guys coming from?” When we say we are coming from New York, many people are surprised, which leads us to briefly talking about our cross-country trip. We talked about how we were doing a lot of camping, and the husband of the family responded with “Oh, you guys are really roughin’ it?” We laughed and Joey told him that we’re hardly roughing it with how nice many of these campgrounds are!
We checked into Canyon Village campground, and set up our camp. Joey didn’t get enough wildlife sighting from this morning, so we went to Hayden Valley again just before dawn to see if we could find more animals feeding. We drove farther in the afternoon than we did this morning, and found a herd of bison relaxing and eating from a distance. There was definitely the opportunity to walk farther into the valley to get close to them, but with recent news of bison charging after people, we decided to take pictures from the road…definitely close enough for us.
We headed back to camp to make a campfire dinner and get to bed early for our big drive to Glacier National Park tomorrow. We’ve heard amazing things about the Going to the Sun Road (some people consider it the most beautiful road in the country), so we’re super excited to drive that tomorrow. We’ll stay at Glacier for two nights, so stay posted for more!