(Note: You should be able to click on any of the photos in this post for a bigger view.)
Our main vacation this summer was a road trip to Yellowstone! We have been putting this off largely because of the horror stories about overcrowding, but we decided it’s not like the crowds are going to get lighter so let’s just go for it. I’m glad we did!
It’s about 750 miles from our house to the West Yellowstone entrance so we did the drive in two days. The first night’s stop was in Butte which left us with a fairly short drive the next day so we stopped in Bozeman to spend the day with some friends that we haven’t seen in a long time. They planned a nice hike for us and a picnic lunch. It was a great way catch up, let the kids run, and enjoy our time together.
Later that day we made our way down to West Yellowstone, MT. Our Airbnb was just west of town in Island Park, ID so that meant every day we started in Idaho, crossed Montana, and spent the day in Wyoming before reversing course back to the rental house.
Yellowstone is enormous. It’s bigger than Connecticut and Delaware combined. Planning a trip into an area that big is a lot of work, but after our success in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, we again turned to dirtinmyshoes.com for this trip. We used the 4-day itinerary for Yellowstone and it was fantastic! It’s ridiculous to say we saw the whole park in 4 days, but we certainly saw a huge percentage of what most people see when they go there. You could spend a lifetime exploring all the trails, but I don’t feel like we missed anything and I don’t know what we would have tried to see if we had another day. Aside from the luxury of not having to research and plan, we also avoided almost all the crowds! There was only one time that I had to circle a parking lot for a bit, and there were many times where we arrived to be the only car in the lot or it was less than 20% full. This made our trip so much more enjoyable! The park very rarely felt crowded for us, but as we’d drive back past places we had already visited, the crowds were obvious. You could easily have a miserable time if you were visiting things at the wrong time. In fairness, we did start our days very early. One day we were in the park before 6:15 and I think the latest we entered the park was 7:30. That’s a big help, but the itinerary was also critical for seeing things in the right order to avoid the hordes.
Going into the park, I knew about Old Faithful and bison, but I didn’t really have an appreciation for the diversity of the landscape. You could divide many of our experiences into three categories: geothermal, wildlife, and water.
Geothermal: Old Faithful is of course the most popular geothermal feature but there are so many more in clusters around the park. I’m glad we saw Old Faithful, but other areas were similarly (or more) impressive. I really enjoyed the Norris Geyser basin. There wasn’t any one particular feature that stood out, but there are some really amazing views of the whole basin steaming. The land formations up by Mammoth Hot Springs were also really bonkers to see.
Wildlife: While we saw animals every day, day 3 was our big animal day. We saw fields with hundreds (thousands?) of bison, bison on the road in front of our truck, grizzly bears, black bears, elk, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn. (On a previous day we also saw a fox.) The highlight of that day for me was getting to our main trailhead for the day and having it swarmed with people. We quickly figured out how to predict what kind of animal was around by how many cars were there and this was a “bear crowd.” Indeed, there were two bears very far off in the distance, barely visible to the naked eye. Guides with spotting scopes indicated it was a grizzly and a baby. After the crowd dissipated, we ended up doing our hike anyway even though it took us directly closer to the bears. We stopped periodically to look at them through our binoculars and ensure that they weren’t getting any closer. They were probably a couple miles away and there was a river crossing between us, but we did stop our hike a little short of our final destination just to be extra safe. On top of the ones we could see, there were also strong warnings about bear activity in the area. Two bison had duked it out the previous week with one of them dying. Rangers had moved the carcass away from the road and that carcass turned into a feeding ground for a lot of animals. All that was left when we went by were part of the spine and the skull. I always carried bear spray.
Water: Yellowstone River starts from an enormous and beautiful lake and the plummets down two waterfalls in rapid succession as it dives into the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.” We spent one morning viewing the falls from four or five different spots. The Lower Falls are especially beautiful in the early morning light. Later in the day we stopped for a picnic lunch along Yellowstone River. After carefully stowing our food back in the truck so as not to attract animals, we went back for a stroll along the river. We were all taking our own path when suddenly Elijah and Tyla noticed that we were walking right past a sleeping bison! Tyla and Elijah were able to turn around and walk back but I had already gone past it. There weren’t a lot of good options for getting around it so I just went back the way I came and thankfully it just stayed where it was. You can make your own estimate from the picture below but I’d say we were within 30-40 feet. It may not look like much from the picture, but it’s another thing being there with them. They are huge and unbelievable fast and nimble. I felt pretty bad about this one because I had spent the whole trip trying to be the first one to spot any animal when we were out since I knew there were some nerves in the family. But in this instance, I got distracted looking at the river and watching my step to not sprain an ankle on the rocks. I’m thankful it didn’t turn into one of those “look what the stupid people did in Yellowstone” situations.
We just got a new Canon R8 within the last year so I took that along each day. It was reasonable to carry with the 28-75mm lens but on our animal day, I took the monster 70-200 lens. On the one hand, it feels silly to take pictures in Yellowstone when there are so many better ones available online. But on the other hand, it’s really fun to have pictures that line up exactly with our memories. I tried to take a lot of photos with Tyla and/or Elijah in them, but I still took a lot of scenery pictures too. One of them got printed to poster size and another one at 8×10. Both are hanging on our walls at home.
As a packing reminder for our next trip, we did have some binoculars along but I wish we had another set or maybe even a nicer set. We used them a LOT. For Yellowstone in particular, it also would have been fun to bring our infrared thermometer along to see how hot some of the features were.
Booking a trip anywhere in the western US in the late summer is a gamble. Beyond the normal questions about heat and rain, there’s a good chance that you’ll at least have enough smoke to mess up the views or at worst, there’s enough smoke that you don’t even want to be outside. We were incredibly blessed on all fronts with the weather. It was cool in the mornings, warm in the afternoons, and we had nearly perfect air quality. There were some sprinkles while we were visiting Old Faithful but that was perfect timing if it had to happen. On our first day as we were driving back to the rental house, Elijah pointed off to the horizon and said, “What’s that?” It was a brand new fire starting! Not only did I have to think about whether we might need to evacuate or how we would know, but I wondered what we’d find the next morning. Despite the fire growing, it was never a danger to us and amazingly the smoke never impacted us in the park! Shortly after we left, the weather deteriorated and there was a lot more smoke. We could not have asked for better timing.
Whenever we do a trip like this, we like to play the license plate game. Elijah used to be our scribe and he would mark things off on the sheet. Now that job has transitioned to Tyla which means I have to keep a list in my head and then report them to her when she wakes up. Ha! Visiting a national park somewhat in the middle of the country is a great place to polish off whatever was missed on the drive, but unfortunately Delaware and West Virginia eluded us. The highlight of that game was on our last day in the park as we were driving back to the exit. We had been following a motorcycle with a license plate that we couldn’t quite read. I didn’t want to get too close but when we arrived at one of the few stop signs in the park, we were able to pull up close enough to read that it was from Brazil! Then to top it off, the truck coming the other way had a New Hampshire plate. That was the 48th and final US plate that we saw.
Our days in the park were long. As I mentioned, we started early and most days we got home around 4:30-5pm. The park is enormous so there was a lot of time spent just driving around. I estimate that we averaged around 150 miles per day of driving in the park and about 5-6 miles of walking. I definitely felt like we pushed the border of making good use of our time and wearing ourselves out. We basically did nothing at the rental house except eat, get prepared for the next day, and then sleep. Yet it never felt like we were killing ourselves to see too much stuff.
For food we generally ate oatmeal or eggs at the house and then packed a lunch. Before we leave home, we bought a summer sausage and a block of cheese and that felt like the Widow of Zarapheth from 1 Kings 17 because that summer sausage and cheese somehow fed Tyla and I nearly every day of our trip! Elijah usually had a PB&J or some tuna fish and crackers. We kept a cooler with ice in the back of the truck for the whole trip and it was a great way to have lunch wherever was convenient and always have a good supply of cold water. Before the trip I bought some silicone freezer trays and every night at the rental house, I was able to make enough ice for the cooler that I didn’t have to buy any from the stores in West Yellowstone. But we do have a couple favorite restaurants to recommend too:
- Ernie’s Bakery and Deli – We stopped here twice. The first was on our way into the park right when they opened around 7am. They sell boxed lunches which seemed like a brilliant idea! You pick your own sandwich fixings and then they pile in chips, an apple, candy, a drink, and more. We also stopped there for a delicious breakfast as we left town.
- TR’s Burgers – The whole restaurant is themed with Teddy Roosevelt trivia and photos which is fun, but the burgers are fantastic! They had a nice selection of craft beer as well and you can choose either outdoor or indoor seating.
We piled all our stuff in the truck, said good bye to our rental house, and took a slightly longer route out of town to avoid the fire activity. We weren’t quite heading home yet though as we had planned a two day stop at Silverwood Theme Park in northern Idaho. It has been on our list for a long time and this seemed like a reasonable time to give it a shot. We almost canceled it though because the forecast was for 97 degree weather both days! I’m glad we didn’t cancel though because amazingly the heat never really bothered us too much. We were able to stay cool enough and not get too worn out from the heat. Silverwood is a decent sized theme park with the main draws being 5 big roller coasters and a large water park. Elijah was determined to do his first looping coaster but unfortunately the entry level looping coaster was closed both days we were there. I did the next most intense one and knew that it was asking a bit much from him to try that (though I loved it. Definitely try out Stunt Pilot!) The water park ended up being the bigger hit for the family and we did most of the rides there. I’m glad we got to do Silverwood but it was a bit of a shock after the peaceful beauty of Yellowstone. We don’t have many pictures since we mostly left our phones in a locker.
I was really looking forward to this trip and it did not disappoint. A road trip to a National Park is almost always a winner for me and I’m thankful that Tyla and Elijah enjoy them too. I know as a kid I wasn’t always the easiest to travel with on that kind of a trip, but now every time Tyla and I discuss what we want to do for our next trip, I always have a National Park on the list of choices.
Along with photos, we were taking some video too, so I edited it together into a montage for us to look back on and smile.
