Yellowstone Planner | Updates, Sights, Lodging, Food, Tips and More!

Grab a pen and notepad get ready to take some notes because we're going to cover all the nuts and bolts of planning a trip to Yellowstone like where to stay and where to eat and the things there are to do and give you some special tips along the way. Hey we're Matt and Cheryl from We're in the Rockies and the purpose of our channel is to help you have an amazing trip to the west. If you're watching this video you're probably planning the dream trip of your lifetime to go to Yellowstone National Park. It's a big place there's a lot of information out there. What we want to do in this video is give you the foundation so that you can travel to Yellowstone with confidence and have a great trip. We were both born and raised in Utah and spent our childhoods traveling to the amazing national parks around us. We've been married for 20 years now and love to take our four children to the national parks and we take both sets of our retired parents with us as well. In fact we think we've been to Yellowstone at least 30 times. We love it so much. It's one of the most incredible places on earth with all the diversity there is there. Okay so to get started let's just give you an overview of what Yellowstone is. So Yellowstone was the first national park created in 1872. I find this interesting because it was like 40 years before places like the Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park were created. The first national park in the entire world. So that's a pretty special thing and still among the very most popular parks. Yellowstone is a massive park that is in western Wyoming located up in the mountains. Many millions of years ago there was a massive volcanic eruption there which blew away most of the mountains at least in the southern portion of the park and so although it is located up in the peaks up in the mountains a lot of it is actually pretty flat kind of meadows and and it doesn't always feel like you're in the Rockies because many of them were blown away by that volcano. So the the leftover there is that it's still actually technically a volcano and so what we have is a bunch of geysers and hot springs waterfalls beautiful meadow areas a lot of large pole pines and you still do get some mountain peaks but beautiful lakes and just such an incredible variety of things to do at Yellowstone. That's what makes it so special. Like my dad says it's like many national parks rolled into one. All right so let's go over the layout of Yellowstone. Yellowstone is organized into a figure eight. It's one great big loop but there is a connecting road in between and that loop can take between four to seven hours to drive around. So this is a big big park but pretty much everything you're going to want to see as mentioned before are the waterfalls the wildlife canyons geysers all of those things are right off of that main loop. Just quick little parking lots off to the sides and so you want to just plan on being on that loop most of the days you drive around. There are five distinct entrances into the park each one leading to the grand loop although depending on the entrance it may be a five minute drive or it may be a 30 minute drive so depending on the entrance you use you may have a little bit of driving time before you get to the main parts of the park. Okay next up let's talk about the thing that everybody wants to know about right now is the condition of the roads after the floods of 2022. So let's just rewind a little bit and talk about the floods real quickly. In 2022 Yellowstone had some major major probably the most significant damage that Yellowstone's ever sustained from a natural disaster like that. It is on par with two other natural disasters that it had in the past the 1959 earthquake and then in 1988 they had the famous summer of fires. The floods of 2022 were actually more damaging than either of those ones because it ruined a bunch of roads and ruined some water lines and sewage lines to some of the hotels. It caused two entrances to be shut down for I think just about the whole year. Now here's what's kind of incredible is that the people that live in the northeast entrance there's there's a little town just outside the northeast entrance called Silvergate and Cook City two little towns actually those people in the winter they can't get to civilization except by going through Yellowstone National Park and up through Gardner Montana and so they would have been cut off had these road crews and contractors not done just a herculean effort to get these roads back functioning again by the winter so I think by October they had opened up a new road going in through the northern entrance really just amazing I want to give kudos here in this video to all those people who worked so hard to get that done to both the National Park and the cities and the contractors nearby who worked together that really was impressive and it's good for us as tourists but was necessary for those people that live there. All these towns on the outside of Yellowstone these little gateway towns are all tourist towns as well so their whole livelihood revolves around tourism to Yellowstone they were all actually set up just to serve Yellowstone tourists so that was amazing and the bottom line for us and for you if you're traveling in 2023 here or beyond is that the roads are are working again they actually built a brand new road to go from the north entrance from Gardner Montana to Mammoth the road's actually not brand new it's it's old it was the original stagecoach road that they took from Gardner to Mammoth back in the day and they had kind of used as a service road for a while so that's pretty cool that they turned you know that now we can drive that old historic road bottom line for you for this year's the roads are in good condition and barring any other natural disasters should not be an issue at all. That when Yellowstone flooded it was one of those moments where like you remember where you were at when you saw it we were actually in Europe and saw it while we're eating breakfast at our hotel and it was just unbelievable and it it really makes me feel a little emotional to think about how that is ready to be traveled already I bet you it might be their biggest tourist year ever because people didn't get to go last year and they're ready to go so that that's my prediction we'll see. All right so let's talk about the fun stuff now things to do in Yellowstone National Park so we're going to cover quite a few different ideas for you here first thing to do is simply just to look for wildlife that is why a lot of people are coming to Yellowstone because they want to see that wildlife it's one of the best places in the United States to see wildlife what I wanted to do is give you my unscientific opinion of the likelihood that you're going to see some of these animals and so let's just cover a couple of them. Moose I have never seen a moose in Yellowstone so I'm going to rate this at about a 10% likelihood that you're going to see a moose only because some other people on our channel said they've seen moose I know there's plenty of moose in the park but I've just never seen them now if you go down to Grand Teton National Park that's like a 95% you're going to see a moose if you go down there wolves are one of the main reasons that people come to Yellowstone at least some people wolf watchers I'm going to rate wolves at about 75% chance that you'll see them as long as you get to the right place way early in the morning with a scope then you have a pretty good chance of seeing some wolves very small chance that you'd ever just see a wolf kind of roaming around the side of the road or crossing in front of you that's pretty that's pretty unlikely you don't need to know how to find a wolf you need to know how to find a wolf watcher and there's usually a whole crew of them you'll know them by their scopes on the side of the road they look like they're camped up there for hours because they are like some people this is what they do when they go to Yellowstone is they just hang out with their scopes because they want to view that wildlife bears let's talk about bears black bears I'm going to rate at about 75% again as long as you're getting to the right areas of the park plenty of times we go to Yellowstone and we do not see any bears at all but again you know as long as you're kind of spending a significant amount of time at the right areas of the park you're probably you'll probably see a black bear grizzly bears I'm going to rate at about 25% so they hang out farther away from the road and maybe even lower right because we've only seen a few grizzlies there probably but again we're not the type that's just going to go sit in a valley and just wait all day to see wildlife that's not really us we're kind of coming and going let's talk about elk 100% pretty much 100% you should see an elk or many elk when you get to Yellowstone because they're all over the park especially if you go to Mammoth Hot Springs guaranteed to see them because they just hang out in the town and walk around yes in fact I can't I cannot recall a time of us ever going to Yellowstone and not seeing an elk one thing we know that there is not a single person who's ever visited Yellowstone without seeing a bison so bison 100% you've got to see a bison when you go in fact by the end of your trip you might be shooing those bison away because they're going to be blocking the road you need to drive on so yeah yeah you're you're gonna see bison and you know what every time I see a bison I still think they're super cool they're so big and unusual looking and yeah yeah you're more likely to get in the bison jam than you ever see a grizzly bear I'm sure so uh anyway there's there's some of the wildlife that you can see and are my my very unscientific opinion as to the likelihood plus you're going to see other animals like coyotes coyotes beavers swans otters oh yeah Yellowstone is Yellowstone is just cool that way yeah I mean that's as an adult I like seeing all the things but as a child I didn't care about all the natural formations I just wanted to see animals and I think that's a real draw for children okay next up are geysers Yellowstone is filled with geysers and they are so accessible there's boardwalks to help you see these geysers and there's actually four different types that you're going to look for now I'm guessing you probably heard of Old Faithful because it's the most iconic geyser in Yellowstone and it's one that shoots out of the ground and it's predictable and amazing and should be on everyone's trip if they're going to yell like on their list if they're going to Yellowstone but there's also springs and there are these big beautiful pools of water with these cool colors in them and they're super super hot and the ground around them is fragile so that's why those boardwalks are there is there because the ground is just unsteady and so they build those boardwalks for accessibility and for safety for the visitors so you've got geysers springs there's these mud pots that looks like the mud is like melted down and it's just like bubbling up and then the last thing is you're actually going to see heat coming out of the ground steam because there's fumaroles and there's just a lot of hot gas escaping from the earth and it's really quite an unusual sight to see all those things going around in the scenery around you okay next up is waterfalls there are a ton of very accessible waterfalls in Yellowstone just roadside waterfalls literally just pull off to the side of the road in the parking lot and walk out to see a waterfall and really a lot of very beautiful waterfalls now the two most famous waterfalls are Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls these are along the Yellowstone River they go into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and they are just amazing they are they're magnificent you can walk you can see them from a number of different angles you can actually walk right down to the brink of the falls where they're going off the cliff but you can see them from multiple different angles the brink of the upper falls is my absolute favorite you just would not believe the amount of water going over it's so much it's so loud and it's really exciting like that's another cool favorite site for kids that's one that i loved as a kid too one of my favorite ones is Gibbon Falls just a roadside waterfall that kind of splays out as really beautiful as it falls but there's other towering ones like Tower Fall Fairy Falls is very beautiful and tall and so gosh that's just one of the very cool things about about Yellowstone is the waterfalls for sure and so i would just say too that Yellowstone is one of the most visually active places that you'll visit like it's cool because you're driving down the road you're going to see a bison crossing the road and then you see steam coming up over here you see a waterfall there you see a geyser shooting off there and so it's just an active place that's really really makes it incredibly unique among scenic destinations okay but moving on i want to talk about Yellowstone Lake oh my goodness Yellowstone Lake is so big i have my numbers here i'm gonna look at my computer for a second Yellowstone Lake is 20 miles long 14 miles wide and at the deepest spot is 390 feet deep this is a massive lake and when i visited Yellowstone as a child that's what we spent a lot of our time doing actually was going out on the lake and fishing now i want to be really clear that Yellowstone Lake is not like a beach town party place there's really not much beach the water is only 41 degrees super cold and yeah it's just not a place you really hang out for that reason but we would fish on the lake and you would drive your boat out miles to go to the fishing spot and it's just it's pretty impressive in fact matt took a boat cruise out there on the lake right here the boat that you see on the picture here yep you can take a little boat cruise out on the lake and they'll tell you some stories about it there actually some really interesting stories about that oh and one of my very favorite things about Yellowstone Lake is if you're down at West Thumb there's some geysers in the lake like as you're walking along the boardwalk you can look into the lake and you can see you can see them and it's so cool i love it next thing to do at Yellowstone is see some canyons some really beautiful canyons so the most famous canyon is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and what a great name is that the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone that is the most famous and the most beautiful there's yellow rocks the yellow walls you know red tinting big waterfall beautiful but there are some other canyons like the Golden Gate Canyon uh up near Mammoth is a really beautiful one i saw a painting for that in Cody Wyoming a few years back and that's a nice little one to drive through um Firehole Canyon is a nice little just roadside drive Pelican Valley is actually the canyon that you go through as you're entering Yellowstone from Cody Wyoming and that's actually the most scenic entry into the park is Pelican Valley that's that's a beautiful one that Buffalo Bill Highway is what it's called throughout Yellowstone again some parks like the Black Canyon of the Gunnison is one canyon right Yellowstone's got like a bunch of canyons so yeah it's like Yellowstone hoards all the best stuff yeah there's a lot of cool things there okay next thing there are is to see in Yellowstone are the valleys so Lamarke Valley is on the northern part northeast and it's just a road it's a road that drives out for a while and then you just turn around and drive back and so along the road you will probably see wolf watchers with their scopes and and hopefully you'll see some other wildlife like bison bears things like that but it's kind of a it's kind of a crapshoot you may go out there and you may see a lot of animals or you may go out there and see nothing but yeah Lamarke Valley is very famous very scenic and very beautiful and very exciting now if you're not if that's not your pace of like really getting into the wildlife you can still see a lot of really great wildlife in a couple of other valleys that are less out of your way in fact Hayden Valley is right on the lower loop so you're gonna be driving past it anyway the Hayden Valley has like that talked about elk everywhere bison everywhere we've seen bear on Hayden Valley and we've seen lots of birds and deer and yeah Hayden Valley is a great it's a great one that you're naturally going to be seeing and then another one is Madison Valley which is from the west entrance of Yellowstone onto the loop this is kind of yeah this is kind of an underrated one and grazing areas for the bison and the elk we usually see elk bison we saw some coyotes once anyway that's a pretty and it's just pretty picturesque you see people fly fishing in the river nobody ever talks about it but no we always have great experiences there so very good um another thing i wanted to bring up was just the river so while you're walking around the geysers it might be a beautiful river you know flowing through while you're driving a lot of times you're driving alongside the rivers it's easy to just pull off to the side of the road and have a picnic alongside a river and a lot of times we've seen wildlife um okay now let's talk about some activities here so we've got the boat right on the screen here again that's one thing that you could do there at Lake Yellowstone is is do a boat tour or or rent a boat to go out there and go fishing okay so that's something you can do one thing we've really enjoyed as of late is biking in Yellowstone while a lot of people don't really think of Yellowstone as a biking park there are plenty of nice little day trails that you can do and and i want to say that we're not bikers right we're like i ride a beach cruiser like this is not like we don't have spandex no we're not that type of we're like vacation bikers but it's but yes exactly but it's surprisingly a nice park now in the spring it actually opens up for like two weeks where it is strictly a biking only park so if you're if you're a hardcore biker that's something you might want to look into um but aside from that there are little trails a lot of them are shared trails so it's like a hiking trail and a biking trail so this last year i went out to Lone Star Geyser which is a two and a half miles each way so five mile round trip i didn't really want to hike that far not opposed to it but i didn't really want to do it because it had a biking trail and i was like hey i'll go take my bike and save some time and it was awesome it was really cool went out there saw the geyser erupt it was really beautiful rode my bike back the the whole way was paved i also biked to natural bridge last year and uh so anyway it was a really kind of cool way it's been a cool way to go see some more things that would have taken a long time walking so biking has been kind of nice yeah so next up is hiking now of all the national parks that we visit in the west i would actually rank yellowstone last as far as hiking um yellowstone is mostly getting off either like geyser basins or overlooks there are hikes but generally the type of sightseeing we do where it's on boardwalks we're walking around to see a boardwalk or a waterfall or things like that that don't require major hiking i'm not saying the hiking isn't good you can get away from the crowds and all that but you know like i did a five mile hike out to ferry falls and back and the hike itself is pretty boring and mosquito infested the falls were very nice but the hikes can sometimes be kind of boring because you're just going through the trees no real kind of just headliner hikes that i can't even think of you know so so that's something to know about hiking there up next let's talk about getting to yellowstone so if you are flying to yellowstone there are three main airports that you might use there's the bozeman airport in montana there is the jackson airport which is actually located in grand teton national park and then there is the salt lake city airport which is about five hours away salt lake city utah my recommendation here honestly is just to go with whatever's cheapest probably for you because none of them are really like right next to the park so bozeman is about an hour and a half away i think and so that's probably the most common if you're flying in from the east is for people to use bozeman all of them tend to be pretty expensive for people so for that reason i'd probably just say go with whatever's cheapest the the bozeman and the jackson are pretty smaller they're kind of small airports the salt lake city is larger it is a longer drive to get there five hours but it's pretty much a straight shot up i-15 on the western side of the rockies and there are some interesting things to see along the way if you're coming from salt lake so that's the route that we travel and it goes in through west yellowstone if you go on that route some people do fly into bozeman and then they work their way down and then they fly out of jackson or salt lake so that's an option too is that you could fly into one and fly out of another which will give you a way to kind of work your way through those mountains through the t-tuns and through yellowstone park and then fly out of another one without having to drive all the way back so that's not a bad option either okay so i want to talk about driving and road trips so many people you know we've been helping people travel the west for three years now and the longer we do this the more we find out about how people travel and people very often have yellowstone be part of a bigger road trip which i think is a great idea because there's some cool things to see out west and it's hard to get out here grand teton national park is an hour south of the south entrance of yellowstone it is so close and even though they're close to each other what you see is completely different the t-tuns are these amazing peaks and these gorgeous valleys and grand teton is amazing and it's so close to yellowstone i feel like if you're going to yellowstone just spend a couple days down in grand teton and then you can say you've done both another really cool trip is to go to glacier glacier national park is so beautiful also one last one is there's the black and yellow road yeah that goes from the black hills to yellowstone and well it's not actually a road in the early days that was they called it the black and yellow trail in the early early days when they were trying to kind of connect these when there were very few highways going through the the middle of america now it's kind of a series of rows there but but that's a very popular thing to do is to connect the black hills with hills yeah and when we say black hills i think people generally think mount rushmore and might believe that's the only thing there is to do there but we think that the black hills is black hills ton of things to do there we have a whole guide for that yeah i have a video for that so you definitely want to i feel like that's like a hidden gem in the west yeah yeah don't tell your friends beautiful place yeah we're all standing here in this picture in in front of the entry sign you know we have a long tradition a lot of people have a long tradition of taking these pictures at the entrance signs one of our customers they have a tradition of taking a sad photo at the leaving sign when they're leaving the park because they're all sad they're leaving the national park i i thought that was really cool but let's talk about the entrances to yellowstone because this is one of the very big questions that people have is which entrance should i use to get into yellowstone national park there are five of them and so we're going to talk about each of them with some of the pros and cons there the west entrance is the most commonly used entrance but that's because it's the easiest to get to from salt lake even bozeman you can get to that one pretty easily so the west entrance is um has the most maybe touristy feel to it now i don't think it's a touristy as much as like even jackson is touristy yes but and there's only about 1200 people who live there so it's not a terribly touristy town i don't think but there's also not maybe a ton of charm with west yellowstone they do have some activities like the play mill theater which we highly highly recommend that was a wonderful play that we went to last year like very professional and very fun at the same time yes that was great they'll have things like zip lining four-wheeling they have a little rodeo there and some horseback rides out there that you can do um one of probably the top attraction maybe with the play mill theater would be the grizzly and wolf discovery center that's a really nice place to go see grizzly bears up close and wolves up close these are typically rescued grizzlies and wolves really top-notch facility there and they will discover yeah and you get to see them like they're pretty active they only bring out like one bear at a time while it's feeding time and they're like searching for their food they do a wonderful job with those animals and it's a great experience especially if your family's not into waiting around to see the animals like that's a great way to see it and oh by the way there's the west entrance of yellowstone and then the city is called west yellowstone so that's actually the name of a city just to clarify and it literally touches the park last year we we saw the border sign right there yeah well it's funny because my my grandma grew up in west yellowstone and so i'm like i've got to make that distinction yeah that's a good point but um but there's also like two other really cool things to do outside of west yellowstone and one is to go to the earthquake lake visitor center that's where the major damage was from that 1915 earthquake i mentioned earlier yeah that is a really interesting site yeah and and not crowded like you can escape the crowds and see something cool there the other thing that we discovered this year was virginia city that is a ghost town and like a legit ghost town you can look into various little buildings along the street and it shows like what the hat shop would have looked like or what the typing shop would have looked like or the candy shop it was a great experience and they have a touristy little place called nevada city which is actually that you can pay admission to and go in there and see that we didn't have time to do it but that looks cool but even if you can only stop in virginia city we loved our experience there the big benefit to west yellowstone honestly is that it's located like in the middle of the loops there pretty much down kind of by that southern loop so when you enter the park even though it does take about 15 minutes to get to the grand loop road it's actually the closest to all the major attractions the other thing to know about west yellowstone is there's lots of like forest service camping out in the area west yellowstone has the greatest amount of hotels and restaurants and things like that okay the next entrance the next most common entrance is the north entrance this is gardner montana which again just like west yellowstone literally borders the park and they this was the original entrance to yellowstone and they have a ceremonial arch there called the roosevelt arch that you can actually drive through on your way into the park which is kind of a fun little thing gardner most so most people who are entering through gardner are flying into bozeman and driving to gardner just know that from bozeman you could go gardner or west yellowstone whichever is more interesting to you most people coming through gardner now we stayed at chico hot springs last year which was an attraction in and of itself there's hot springs there's a really fine dining there it's kind of a cool little resort historic resort what else about gardner they have river rafting trips out of gardner and they have some hotels and restaurants there too not as much as west yellowstone but i'd say that's the second most touristy spot in the park and actually when matt and i visit yellowstone we like to stay in two different locations we'll usually try to stay in the west for a couple days and then head up north for a day and stay there that way it just decreases our driving time it's kind of what we like to do it's only four miles away from mammoth hot springs which is where the park headquarters is and that's kind of an attraction in and of itself just visiting mammoth so it's it's quick into the park but then you're on that northern end now one of the big advantages to staying up there is that you are on that northern end so it's a little closer to get to lamar valley if that's an important thing for you to go out and yeah like if you're wanting to go there at 4 30 in the morning to watch wildlife yeah yeah you don't want to yeah it's nice to trim some of your driving time off there okay next is the south the south entrance takes an hour to even get to the loop and as we mentioned before the south entrance is where you access grand teton you exit you're basically getting into grand teton national park it's really close by of course we love grand teton national park and there is some nice lodging in the jackson hole area and it's very upscale very expensive it's regularly four hundred dollars a night and up very very pricey we don't think it's a good jumping off point if you're visiting yellowstone like if you're going to do both those things in one trip i would recommend changing locations but i definitely recommend visiting teton and jackson lots of cool area to go and and very common so we said it's about an hour from the south entrance to the grand loop but the other thing is it's about an hour from jackson to the south entrance so it's it's just there's not like a gateway town on the south southern part or on the southern entrance it's just the grand teton national park and then jackson located on the south end of grand teton so it's a long ways into the park from there there are some tour companies that you know they they're billing themselves as as a way to see grand teton and yellowstone in a day but i'm telling you these are big parks and that's not really you're gonna be spending a lot of time driving past things that might not be that interesting yeah it's just too much to see in a day really too much to do so too far away in our opinion one thing i'll mention though on the south side is dubois wyoming they have a brand new museum there called the museum of military vehicles and it is a world-class museum it's really nice like oh my gosh so professional such great displays you can spend an entire day there and i would actually recommend you spend at least a half a day exploring that and maybe a full day exploring that area and it is i mean it's a little outside of grand teton it's a little far away but i just wanted to point it out because that is brand new and it is stunning it is really cool so if you are into that just in the least you could spend all day there and not see it all it's amazing and it's really like on par with the museums in washington dc like it's very very well done and even if you're not into military vehicles i enjoyed it i thought it was good speaking of amazing museums let's jump over to the east entrance now so this is coming from cody wyoming into the park here again cody wyoming is like two hours away from old faithful or you know really a long ways away from the the center portion of the park the drive to get there on the buffalo bill highway is beautiful like and cody is a really great town now of all these towns that we're talking about cody is actually the most authentic town i mean people are living there working they're doing regular jobs there as opposed to some of the other gateway towns but it also feels like there's some fun history there and i really liked our time in cody wyoming it is a fun fun town with like the irma was buffalo bill cody's hotel and there's a cool dam there the cold ghost town there i mean it's it's a great town and and it has the best museum yeah the buffalo bill center of the west is five museums and one your tickets like the military vehicle museum your ticket for the buffalo bill center is good for two days and legit you need you need like two days to go visit that and then cody is also famous for the rodeo by the way so you can spend a ton of time in cody and but but here again we don't think it's a good jumping off point to go visit yellowstone and come back to cody you don't want to stay there no there's so much driving yeah but if you can visit it on the way in particularly like if you're coming from mount rushmore great great place oh by the way buffalo bill cody set up the town named it after himself and he did it because he knew yellowstone was going to be an attraction it had just been set aside as a national park and so he was like i want to get in on that action so that's how he that's how the town got set up okay our last one is a northeast entrance and that is with cook city and silverton right silvergate silvergate montana these are actually technically montana they're just right across the yes and that was a pretty charming little town it's very small a few places to stay like a couple places to eat but it's right on the hills of the beartooth highway so a really cool drive coming into town it is close to lamar valley yeah i would say not a lot of lodging options but yeah although we stayed at the grizzly lodge and loved it yes the grizzly lodge was great and it's super remote like you feel like you are really really in the mountains out there and so but but it's a bad jumping off point to see the whole park from but it's a great place to go see if you want to get up early and go to lamar valley to see some wolves or something like that that's pretty nice and that's what we did also a great i mean the drive-in like she said on the beartooth highway was just wow stunning so okay so finally our recommendation here really is to to stay in different places um if possible okay west yellowstone is the best place to visit the entire park from if you're staying outside of the park so i would stay there if you only want to stay in one location but nicer to move to at least two locations to see the whole park yes let's talk about park fees and reservations so yellowstone is cheap to go to in general 35 for a carload of people for a week what a bargain there's also even some other discount passes for fourth graders get in free there's a golden age pass yeah yeah our parents love their golden age pass people are disabled veterans they have some special deals for them so look at those before you leave and you can even get your pass before you go it might save you some time oh and no reservations needed i think that's such a relief with so many of our national parks going over to reservation systems yellowstone's so big it hasn't had to implement that so sigh of relief also just keep in mind the park is open 24 hours a day so you can enter at any time if you get to the entry gate here before a ranger is there you can actually just drive in it's fine but you'll just need to pay your fee later if you haven't already so next up let's talk about getting around the most important thing for you to know is that you will need a car unless you're going on a tour or something yellowstone does not have a good shuttle system they it's just big you need your car to get around so just plan on that the speed limit is 45 miles per hour and sometimes you feel like you should be able to drive faster than that but that's the max and and should be obeyed there's a lot of international tourists there that may not be familiar with the roads and of course so much wildlife keep an eye out for the wildlife for sure so be respectful there one of the things you'll run into is bison jams now this guy's not in the middle of the road but he very well could be and so you'll run into that where there's just bison walking across the road if you're there there's usually construction going on in yellowstone with over 150 miles of roads it's just a constant project of upgrading those roads and repairing them and they're they're all paved which is amazing to me like you couldn't you're fine in whatever vehicle in yellowstone you don't need a four-wheel drive you don't need high clearance the roads are very accessible for any sort of vehicle there are kind of like main stops along that big figure eight so like four main stops on the top loop and five on sorry six on the lower it's about a half hour in between each stop as a general rule it'll take a little longer or shorter but general rule about a half hour from stop to stop and at most of the stops i should say there are gas stations that you can fill up on so gas is never far away i'm sure it's a little more expensive in the park so if you want to fill up before you enter the park you probably be good but always always something nearby and there's even a few service stations within the park so that's also good peace of mind the wi-fi is really well the cell connection is pretty bad yeah don't don't count on having cell connection some of those busier areas you might get some but i don't really count on it the truth is you will be spending a lot of time driving around in yellowstone and it's really important that you kind of have a game plan to reduce that driving time and so it's important that you have a good plan when you start off for the day that you know where you're going and how long you'll be gone for and things like that our guide has a really great way to do the park efficiently so that you're not having to backtrack because i've said before if you pass a stop you're not going back to it because it's just too far away so it's really important to have the day planned out our guys right here we're going to talk about this a little bit more later but um yeah really it's so much driving so you do need to have a little game plan or or you could get pretty frustrated just feeling like you're driving and driving and not seeing as much as you had hoped next up is lodging within yellowstone national park yellowstone actually has several lodges in fact i looked it up and there are about 2300 rooms and cabins for rent and so it's kind of a motley crew of options we just got back from glacier we did this amazing trip there last august and all the lodges were the same they are these beautiful swiss style chalets but in yellowstone it's kind of hit or miss on what type of accommodations you're gonna see there's the very famous old faithful inn which is the largest log cabin structure in the world and so cool yeah you gotta go check that out yeah i mean even if you're not staying there just go see it because it's cool yeah they do daily tours there by the way free tours so i did one last year and yeah you gotta go check out that pinpoint and they have some fancier ones like lake village right the lake hotel mammoth mammoth hot springs hotel those are kind of nicer upper end you know and canyon is newer of course yes but then they have some other ones that are just not quite as fancy and nice and less expensive and it's great they have options for all different types of travelers um if you stay at lodging within the park you're paying a premium for the location which is pretty big because it will save you driving time which is a big deal and you're getting to see some like just be surrounded in a pretty area which is also nice um you can count on all these hotels especially the fancier ones having a fine dining experience available at like a nice restaurant there's grills at all of these areas there's usually a lounge there's usually a coffee shop um most of the lodges have actual keys um then also like no ac no tv no air conditioning probably very poor wi-fi or wi-fi i do think when i was researching i think that the hotel at mammoth has tvs in the room oh i think i'm wrong so we've never stayed in a lodge or a hotel in yellowstone national park we either camp or we stay outside of the park we would like to we're not opposed to it it's a little more expensive so we've we've we've never done it but if you can afford it that again the big benefit is that you're closer you're just inside the park so there's not as much driving now in glacier some of those hotels just have these amazing views and it's like you've got to just go stay there for that view you know it doesn't really exist so much in yellowstone i wouldn't say except for maybe lake lake hotel has the lake outside but you're not getting like these incredible vistas from the place like you are even say the jackson lodge in grand teton so something to think about there all these the nice thing is all these are managed by zanterra that's the concessionaire who manages these so they're all on that one website easy to find a book and and 12 months in advance and you're going to want to do that these book up so fast it's difficult to get a room you can plan on them costing 200 and up for a standard room and your room will be comfortable and simple okay up next let's talk about camping in yellowstone so you can see here this picture i took last year when i camped in yellowstone bison coming to visit me in the campground that was pretty cool so a couple things to know about camping in yellowstone there are 12 campgrounds unlike the lodges which are all managed by zanterra the campgrounds there are five that are the five largest ones are managed by zanterra but then there are seven others that are managed by yellowstone so there's different places to book those campgrounds online since they're managed differently a couple of just basic concepts about camping in yellowstone the campgrounds are typically smaller than you would find say in the forest service outside so some people complain that they're a little cramped i haven't ever had an issue or had a complaint about that but it is true that they're pretty close you know i'd say and they're filled with lodgepole pines so lodgepole pines are not real full and green and so there's not a lot of privacy you can wave to your neighbor from your campsite it's just fine also they don't accommodate large rvs so you're gonna you know you have to check the links there but typically 30 feet and under for your your rv there there is one campground that does only rvs called fishing bridge campground that's the only one that has hookups for you if you're an rver and i have heard i haven't camped there but i've heard there you're pretty jammed in there and fishing bridge rv sometimes as i mentioned sometimes wildlife will come through your campground depending on where you're staying so that's that's kind of a cool thing this reminds me that one of the common questions with yellowstone is can i camp in my car and the answer to that is that you can camp in your car as long as you are actually in a campsite a reserved campsite so i camped in my car last year here i pulled up and just it was just me and i i didn't want to spend the time to set up my tent because i wasn't going to be much in my campground i was out exploring things and stuff so i just slept in my car each night and that was fine you could do that and in this image here you can see a bear box right next to that bison and so you need to be aware that you have to put your food in bear boxes if you have any out at all or it needs to be in your car the bears in yellowstone are not yet able to break into cars but i have heard that this is a thing in california where the bears are actually breaking into cars they figured out how to open car like car doors which is craziness so we're hoping that they don't like get together and share their tips from yosemite right so one of our favorite things about camping in yellowstone is the ranger programs most of them have an amphitheater where at night you can walk over to the amphitheater and watch a ranger give a really good program and you can do that even if you're not camping in the campground you can just go by and watch one of those but but it is really nice to do that while you're camping and the crisp mountain air in the morning is the best it's so nice like just to smell the pine trees and hear the birds and we love camping in yellowstone like i can't wait to go back check out our blog post because we give a lot of the details we're not mentioning this video because they're kind of boring but they'll be helpful for you planning your trip so check out our website we're in the rockies.com if you are wanting to get more into the nitty-gritty okay now next up let's talk about food in yellowstone so you can see this lovely picture here of my burger and fries last year this is at the geyser grill near old faithfuls where i got this and yellowstone is known for having bad food that's just the way it is it's far away from anything it's hard to get fresh ingredients there zanterra is the concessionaire that runs all these and zanterra does i think a really good job i mean they manage a lot of concessions at glacier grand canyon like they they're kind of the big monopoly of concessionaires in the national parks and i think they do a very good job i have had some good meals in yellowstone as well so i had a good one at canyon village where they had some roast and huckleberry gravy or something like that so and our favorite experience was at the old west cookout and that was good food like i thought we really enjoyed our meal there that was really good and and we ate at the roosevelt dining room which was also good that was good that was very good i think i think you needed a steer clear of the grills like this is what you get at the grill and i got some bad nachos at another grill i will say though that the roosevelt lodge was a little bit nicer the old west experience was nicer we have not done some of the fine dining like at old faithful you can have fine dining same way at lake hotel and maybe zanterra has reserved all their good food for the fine dining that's possible i want i want to do that someday yeah yeah try that someday you know every time we go to yellowstone we try to do something new so we will definitely be trying more and more um so that we always have good information to give you but but just know that generally the food is bad but their ice cream is good the ice cream it comes from montana there's two places in it that it comes from montana and it is it is really good actually and it's really fun it's fun to go watch old faithfully wrapped with an ice cream cone like that's a great memory that i had as a kid and it's fun to do now we we used to go get ice cream at tower so ice cream is really yummy there but our very favorite thing to do in yellowstone national park is to pack picnics um there are so many great picnic areas and like matt said earlier there's rivers everywhere and it's just fun and it's a great opportunity to get out of the car and like let the kids run around instead of like being stuck in a restaurant waiting in line pack your picnic and it doesn't need to be complicated there are general stores all those main areas we talked about earlier you could if you flew here get a disposable cooler throw your stuff in and you're good yeah that's how you visit yellowstone that's how you do it you picnic you picnic well and that then that's the thing too is that yellowstone you kind of have to see on its own terms like that you're gonna see wildlife and you might want to stop and see it and get stuck in a bison jam waiting for a geyser to go off something like that okay up next let's talk about when to visit yellowstone and when not to visit yellowstone so the main travel season is from june to september that is when the bulk of the four million plus visitors per year visit yellowstone is during that time the daytime temperatures during that time are in the 80s and it is really beautiful so like you can't go wrong really visiting during that time it's just a little more crowded of course during like july june july and august when school's out it's going to be a lot more crowded september it it used to fade off a lot in september but all the retired people all you baby boomers are visiting in september now and so it's not quite as as uncrowded as it used to be i think one thing that's really nice about visiting during the normal travel season is that some of those extra activities are open like you can go see a play you can do river rafting excursions so if you're wanting to mix up your trip but that's when those things are available um also as far as like lodging options it's kind of like memorial day through i think most of them are open through september every lodge has a little bit or yeah sorry labor day every every part or every lodge kind of has its own schedule but that's just a general rule of thumb is that's when they're all open okay it's important to realize that the park is actually closed for in november and march for most of those months november and march it's closed so it closes in november because they're letting the snowfall come onto the roads and then they pack it down and they turn it into a snowmobile park or a snow coach park for the winter and then in march it's closed because they are starting to plow the roads in march and so it gradually opens between march and may as they get those roads plowed takes them two months to plow those hundreds of miles of roads so we have had a few people say hey i want to visit in march what do you think about that it's like you can't visit in march really now there is one road that's open all year long and remember earlier i told you the residents from cook city need to get out of the park through gardner and so that road is plowed all year long that northern road so you can visit any time of the year for that northern road it's kind of popular for people in the winter to visit and drive in there to see wildlife in lamar valley along that road also it is open in the winter as a snowmobile park as i mentioned so december to february it's a winter park and we are going to go there for the first time this february to experience a snow coach tour or a snow coach ride into old faithful so we're doing some videos on that that'll be very exciting looks so beautiful but anyway we haven't done that yet and we've never been to yellowstone in the winter so this is first for us yeah we are excited yeah yeah okay so bumper seasons i mean if you're really wanting to avoid crowds you can go in may and october but there is a risk and that risk is snow and when like the snow happens that first snow of the year or like a late snow in the spring it closes the park down they don't just get an inch of snow they get a lot of snow and we've had several neighbors that have gone in may and had to dig their way out and come home because yellowstone closed on them so just know if you are coming over in those months it's a gamble all right up next is how long to visit the park so it's another very common question there's so many things to do there people are wondering how many days do you need to a lot to visit yellowstone now as i mentioned i've been visiting yellowstone for over 30 years and we are still doing new things every time we go there's so much to see there i try to make a point to do new things every single time we go and we're not actually even close to doing everything yet there's still so much more to do but if you just want a nice overview of the park generally four days is going to give you that because you can spend two days on the lower loop and two days on the upper loop and you're going to see like the best you know overview of the park yeah you can see the best geysers waterfalls canyon like all those things you should you could go home and say that you've properly done yellowstone with four days if you had a good plan and stuck to it while you were doing it now a lot of a lot of you are coming out here on your big trip and like well you're not going to come out here for four days and go home you want to spend a lot of time out here so i think like a 10 day vacation to the yellowstone and grand teton would be amazing that would be amazing it would give you time to do yellowstone properly it'd give you time to visit cody outside of the park and do the buffalo bill museum and all that stuff right it'd give you time to go spend some time on the west side at earthquake lake and virginia city and then also to drop down south to see grand teton the military museum in dubois jackson wyoming do some river rafting do some a lot of activities 10 days would be an amazing time in this whole area don't you think oh yes and of course you you have to know what type of traveler you are if you're wanting to hike a bunch you might need some more time i mean or if you like to go at a slower pace and have some time to relax i mean all those are variables we're just saying like if you stuck to a pretty not like a rigid exhausting schedule but a pretty tight one four days you could see the best of and and we are both believers too that like i we think it's better to see a couple of parks and the best parts of them than spend a lot of time in one park and then not go to a different one that's kind of like what i mean matt may disagree with me but i think like three days in yellowstone and two days in grand teton could be a good option if you have a few extra days and then you know if you stopped at the black hills on the way out if you're a road tripper or something like that that'd be like a two-week trip and it would be amazing this video is part of a playlist that we have on yellowstone many other videos that you can use to plan your trip to help you out we have a website we're in the rockies.com and we've covered yellowstone cody grand teton virginia city all that stuff we have videos on we also have a really special video if you're wanting to see exactly what there is to see at yellowstone matt really made a pretty special video honoring yellowstone national park for its 150th birthday that shows a lot of the scenery and the things to do so that's a that's like an enjoyable this is like a working video that's a fun video yeah the next thing to know is that when you leave in the morning plan on being gone the entire day you never know what's going to happen in yellowstone and as we've said it's a big big park and it's hard to backtrack and go back to your hotel or campsite so just pack up and plan on being gone for the whole day as we mentioned earlier you kind of need to see yellowstone on yellowstone's terms you have to be flexible because you could get in bison jams you know you could be waiting for geysers you could be any number of things could could kind throw off that schedule so you do need to have a patient mindset and attitude that you're going to go with the flow but you also need to have a plan you've got to know the best sites and what you want to see while you're there yellowstone is so big and there's so much to do that as you drive around on that grand loop road you'll see signs all over the place pointing to a waterfall or a road or whatever attraction it might be and you're not really sure if that's something that you should stop at or not and if you drive by it you're probably not going to encounter that again that day there are definitely a list and b list attractions and you don't want to go to yellowstone and miss an a-list attraction so our itinerary that we made just for you to have a great trip to yellowstone based on our experience of visiting the park so many times and thinking through so many of these issues because by the way i experienced those frustrations multiple times taking our own family there and thinking we missed that and now we're not going to see that on this trip so we created a four-day game plan that gives you the order of things to see the best times of the day kind of how to structure your day this is basically four days of itinerary where the attractions are logically grouped together in the right order you can change the days around as needed so this is a pretty flexible itinerary for you but it is a game plan and again you know you have to be flexible because things can change but having the game plan allows you to be much more flexible and it has great maps that show you how to get around how long it will take to do certain things how rigorous they are how much time it will take it really does give you a great idea of what you're going to want to do and we even have the attractions grouped by this is a must see and this is a great to see if you have time we have helped thousands of people travel to Yellowstone and every year we get hundreds of emails where people tell us how their trip went and i wanted to share this email that we received just to kind of let you know what they thought about the trip i purchased the Yellowstone four-day itinerary and audio tour for may of 2022 it did not disappoint it was so helpful we were able to see so much more than if we had tried to plan it ourselves we all loved the audio tour stories even my teenager the stories were very entertaining and kept our attention we couldn't wait to get back into the car and start the next story the itinerary was easy to follow and hit all the popular attractions with great tips that were on point i was on the fence then purchased this itinerary the day before our trip i am so grateful i did i highly recommend we're in the Rockies i won't hesitate to purchase another itinerary if we visit any other parks thanks for helping us plan our first family trip to Yellowstone fantastic actually brings a lot of joy to my heart to hear especially that the kids really liked that audio guide i poured my heart and soul into the audio guide and the itinerary as we made it in fact the design is based on an early Yellowstone guide by a very famous park employee back in the 1800s and so i actually kind of gave an homage to his design big fan of the history the stories i just love Yellowstone so so for less than what it costs to feed your family a meal you can have this guide to guide you through the park and it's super easy you just go to our website we'reintherockies.com you buy it you download it and you print it if you want and you are ready to go so our mission is to help you have a great trip to the west this is the best way to do that with Yellowstone thank you so much for spending time with us to learn about Yellowstone and let us share one of the places that we really love with you i promise you'll have a great time if you download that guide go check it out right now thank you so much for watching and until next time go west young traveler