The first time I ever visited Yellowstone as an adult was back in 2015. I know I had been at least once before as a kid with my parents and siblings, but I only have a vague memory of seeing Old Faithful and an even hazier memory of hiking down to the Brink of the Lower Falls.
Chris, on the other hand, visited Yellowstone with his grandparents almost every year as a kid. He has many fond memories of his travels to Yellowstone with them. We spent over a week there together in 2015 and explored every corner, and even spent a day at Jenny Lake in the Grand Tetons National Park.
We put in a LOT of miles! We hiked all day every day seeing everything. It was great!
Hands down, our favorite hike we did was called Uncle Tom’s Trail.
If you hike to the Brink of the Lower Falls, you can faintly make out some stairs across the waterfall. We could see people on the stairs and we were quite intrigued and wanted to figure out how to get there. It turns out it’s by the Artist’s Point. We made our way to the stairs – they take you down 328 steps and you are right next to the waterfall. The stairs were very rickety and it was definitely sketchy with all the people traveling up and down, but it was an unforgettable experience to get to be so close to the base of the thundering waterfall at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Getting back up those stairs was no easy feat.
Our next visit to Yellowstone was with my parents and siblings and their families in 2018. We had hyped up this hike to all our family and were really bummed to find that the trail was temporarily closed. But never fear, we’d try again next time.
Then me and Chris went again in 2020, this time with our infant daughter. We made our way to the top of the trail to find out that now it had been PERMANENTLY CLOSED. We were, and still are, DEVASTATED!
I guess the stairs were just too rickety. We talked to a park ranger, and they basically said it would take millions of taxpayer dollars to bring the stairs up to code. Me and Chris have remarked multiple times since then that were we ever to get a windfall, our first donation would be to Yellowstone to rebuild the Uncle Tom’s Trail.
I doubt we’ll ever have the financial means to do this, so I’m just grateful we were lucky enough to experience the trail before it closed. All I can do now is hold onto that memory and hope that someday, someone with the means and the passion will bring this dream back to life.
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Packing for Adventure 
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