Yellowstone National Park: Chaos Caravan at The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

A must-see stop in Yellowstone National Park is the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Over years and years, the Yellowstone River has eroded the rhyolite rock into an amazing canyon landscape. You can view the canyon and falls from either the north or south side of the river. We took the North Rim Drive and viewed the area from a few different points. We parked at the Brink of the Lower Falls and hiked along the North Rim Trail to Lookout Point. It looks like there is a path that you can view both the Upper and Lower Falls from at that parking lot, but when we were there, the path was closed.

The path was a dirt path that wound its way through trees with the canyon off to the side. There were a few points with a smaller point where you could look over the canyon and get a good view of the falls. At the Lookout Point area, there is another side trail that takes you down to Red Rock Point.

The trip down to the look out on the Red Rock Point was a little more intense of a hike than the North Rim Trail. I’m not super in shape, and it’s do-able, but it’s more than a casual stroll! As we were making the climb down, I kept envisioning the climb up! But a few breaks to catch your breath and some water and the view at the bottom makes it totally worth it! The Lower Falls drop 308 feet and when you get to the bottom of this path, you can feel the spray of the falls!

From Lookout Point, we hiked back to the car and drove on to Inspiration Point. If you didn’t want to make the hike to Lookout Point, you can also drive and park there. The hike was pretty awesome though!

The Inspiration Point area is easily accessible from the parking lot but it does have stairs to go down to the lower lookout spots.

At Inspiration Point, the Lower Falls are further in the distance, but the canyon at this point is amazing. The cliff is so far down. Yellowstone National Park is full of hills and mountains and rocks, and as a mom of a then 7 year old boy, I think I said GET DOWN to my son no less than a million times during the trip! Always climbing to get just a little better view, the places we went during the summer were kind of heart stopping for me! But we all survived!

If you want to see even more video and photos of our stop at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, head on over to our YouTube video! Subscribe if you want to see updates of the next videos we post!

If you have 4th grader, your whole family can get into the National Parks for FREE for the entire year! Our daughter and my niece were 4th graders that year, so we took advantage and went to about four of the parks on our trip! You can get more info on the Every Kid Outdoors Program here. It’s super easy to get started and to get access to some of our country’s most beautiful places!

Thanks for stopping by to check out our adventures! We appreciate your support! See you on our next adventure!