Yellowstone, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and a Grizzly Cub! Day 4

Day 4. This is our last day in Yellowstone. We pack and have breakfast at the diner in the Canyon Village General Store where we swap picture taking responsibilities with a nice French family.

















Molly's jazzed about taking a hike before we drive down to Jackson Wyoming. It's going to be a long day. Dylan and I are not so into it but the "boss" has spoken so we're dressed to hike.

We head down the road to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and don't we come across a Grizzly Cub!

















Having come up a steep incline he crosses the road in front of us and keeps moseying uphill. Amazing. That's the second grizzly we've seen in 4 days. Third if you count the spec we saw through a rangers binoculars. It's thrilling all over again.





I'm already not too excited to hike this morning and now we've just encountered a bear roaming around where we're supposed to be hiking! I counter that maybe we should skip the hike this morning. We don't have bear bells, we don't have bear spray, we're simply not prepared to be hiking in bear country. Mind you this is the same group (my family) who all agreed we would not swim with sharks in the Bahamas and what happened when the opportunity arose to swim where there are sharks? They immediately strapped on the snorkel gear. I stood there for a minute contemplating a scene where I watch my wife and kids get munched while I watch the trickles of blood helplessly from shore ... didn't feel good, so I pulled on my snorkel gear too. You know where this is going. We got to the South Rim trail head and hiked. :)

It was a beautiful day and the river, as it's been all along, was gorgeous! The power of the water was scary. It moved at a NASCAR pace past rocks and over falls big and small. White water highlighted the liquid sapphire. If someone fell into the raging river I don't imagine they'd last long. They be tossed around and beat up like a rag doll.
























The South Rim trail was well worn. The river was on our left and woods on our right. Every 100 feet or so we were drawn back down to the river's edge to take in another transcendent scene.

Here we are hiking the trail.




When you get to the end of the trail you are at Artist Point. When the first Europeans set sights on Yellowstone and told tales of it's wonders they were not well received. The tale tellers were thought to be exaggerating. The next wave of explorers brought artists to document the discoveries and the paintings still looked unreal, ... exaggerated. Here's Thomas Moran's painting of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone















And here's a photograph of the real place. You can see the artists took no creative liberty. It really looks like this!








































Knocked out by the bounty of Yellowstone again we reluctantly say goodbye.

But...we're very excited to be traveling to The Grand Tetons to luxuriate in swanky Jackson Wyoming. See you there