Canyon Village, Yellowstone National Park, WY

Yellowstone is a national park with numerous surprises located in the northwest section of Wyoming. There are four entrances into the park allowing tourists from all over the United States and world to visit the park with ease. One place visitors may wish to stop on their travels is Canyon Village. The village is 40 miles from the west entrance of Yellowstone, 38 miles from Gardiner, 48 miles from Cooke City, and 43 miles from the east entrance of the park.

The village itself is not the main attraction in the area. It is more of a resting place for travelers before they move around the various activities found in Canyon. Canyon Village has a post office, three restaurants, two grocery style stores, a place for getting gear, and souvenir shops. There are also a few cabins and a large campground within the village limits. Concessionaires provide various supplies for those going on horseback rides along the trails. The nearby stables have guides to take visitors out. There are also other park rangers available for hiking tours.

The first stop tourists need to make in Canyon Village is the Canyon Visitor Center. The center offers a number of books on the park, its geology, and the volcanoes and glaciers. Rangers are also on hand to help visitors find trail heads with the best paths for their requirements. There is an auto tour of the canyon area along North Rim Drive. This tour is subject to closures in winter when the roads become impassable with snow. The road begins as a two lane option, but becomes a one way road as it moves into the village. Visitors will pass the 500 ton glacial boulder that marks the entrance of Canyon Village if they come in from the east.

The largest attraction in the canyon is Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It is a natural structure that provides some of the most beautiful landscape photos. The canyon is much younger than the Grand Canyon, having been created by lava flows over time. Glaciers also blocked the canyon, so they eventually had to be melted by time and the lava to form the canyon visitors see today.

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone is 24 miles, with 1,200 feet depth in certain spots. The canyon also reaches 4,000 feet wide at certain points. There are two waterfalls within the canyon for visitors to marvel over. One of the falls, Lower Falls, is larger than Niagara Falls in terms of height. The Lower Falls is 308 feet whereas Upper Falls is only 109 feet in height. Visitors can see Upper Falls from The Brink, Upper Falls Trail and Uncle Tom's Trail. Lower Falls can be found by looking out from Lookout Point, Red Rock Point, Artist Point, the Brink of the Lower Falls, and points on South Rim trail. About 63,500 gal/sec of water flows over the falls during peak runoff season and 5,000 gal/sec during the fall season will make its way from the high mountains over the falls.