Picnic area · Yellowstone National Park
A shaded table break on the way through Virginia Cascade Drive.
Overview
Map
Plan your stop
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Yellowstone Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Yellowstone National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Yellowstone audio tourRecorded for this area
Ice Lake Trailhead“The Ice Lake trailhead is coming up, a good choice for a short, easy lake walk. Allow thirty to forty-five minutes for the one-mile round trip through conifers, with a gentle climb after a small footbridge.”
Plays on the road 0.2 mi from Virginia Cascade Picnic Area in the Parkwolf Yellowstone Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“First time driving through a national park. We used the Yellowstone tour on grand loop Road and it’s just like having a tour guide in your car with you.”
Guide
Virginia Cascade Picnic Area is a small, shaded picnic site on Virginia Cascade Drive, with the Gibbon River meadow just south. It’s a useful place to sit down for lunch on the drive, with 10 picnic tables beneath the trees. The Virginia Cascades waterfall is a separate stop farther west, so this isn’t the falls’ viewing pullout.
There’s no food service listed for this stop, so bring what you want to eat. The National Park Service lists one wheelchair-accessible vault toilet, though the route to the tables isn’t described. Yellowstone’s picnic-area guidance says potable water is available only at Madison, so bring drinking water here. Keep food, trash, coolers and cooking gear in a bear-proof container when they’re not in immediate use.
Virginia Cascade Drive follows part of the Norris-to-Canyon Junction road completed in 1887. The Gibbon River runs through the open Virginia Cascade meadow just south of the picnic area, giving the tables a green, riverside setting.
Wildlife
713 sightingsGrizzly BearMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
743 sightingsWolfMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
5,273 sightingsBisonMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
3,258 sightingsElkMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
397 sightingsMooseMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
1,494 sightingsBlack BearMost seen around 7 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Yellowstone. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
Keep exploring
EasyIce Lake Trail1 mi · 45 min · 0.2 mi awayA short forest walk to the western edge of Ice Lake.
EasyWolf Lake Trail2.4 mi · 1.5 hr · 0.4 mi awayA short waterfall walk through Yellowstone's forest and wet meadows.
ModerateCygnet Lakes Trail8.2 mi · 3.5 hr · 3.1 mi awayAn exposed lodgepole walk reaches a marshy meadow with waterfowl.
ModerateSolfatara Creek Trail6.3 mi · 3.5 hr · 3.3 mi awayA long thermal creek walk through forest, meadows, and hot springs
EasyPorcelain Basin Trail1 mi · 45 min · 3.5 mi awayLoop past steaming geysers and vivid runoff in a pale basin.
EasyBack Basin Trail1.5 mi · 1.3 hr · 3.5 mi awayA wooded thermal loop with geysers scattered through the pines.
EasyGrebe Lake Trail6.2 mi · 3.5 hr · 4.2 mi awayA long, gentle fire road walk to a lakeside turnaround.
Sight · 0.7 mi awayVirginia CascadeA 60-foot cascade along the old road east of Norris.
Picnic area · 2.9 mi awayNorris Meadows Picnic AreaA quieter riverside lunch stop near Norris Basin
Campground · 3.3 mi awayNorris CampgroundA central campground beside Yellowstone’s Gibbon River meadow.
Sight · 3.4 mi awayEchinus GeyserA 66-foot acidic geyser with sea-urchin spines around a red rim.
Sight · 3.4 mi awaySteamboat GeyserThe world’s tallest active geyser—and you can’t plan its eruptions.
Sight · 3.5 mi awayMuseum of the National Park RangerA small log museum traces Yellowstone's ranger profession.
Sight · 3.5 mi awayNorris Geyser Basin Museum and Information StationA 1930 stone and log museum opens onto Norris’s geothermal story.
Sight · 3.5 mi awayPorcelain Basin OverlookA short boardwalk reveals changing colors across a thermal basin.Parkwolf’s Yellowstone ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
