Chapter 15: And Now For Something Completely Different.
Well, slightly different, anyway. I’m going to jump out of chronological order for a bit here. When I last left you, we hadn’t quite finished off the day after leaving Grand Teton National Park. So I thought this would be a good spot to show you where we ended up, and then post some photos taken over the next 2 days in order to show the place off a bit.
Technically, Grand Teton National Park and
Yellowstone National Park do not share a border, but for all intents and purposes they run right into each other, connected via the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway through a stretch of Federally protected land. It’s approximately 20 miles between the two parks, and it’s a fairly easy drive along Jackson Lake before you finally arrive at the South Entrance.
I have to admit, I was pretty thrilled to be here. Not only because Yellowstone was one of my favorite parks from my youth, but I was excited about our hotel choice as well. And not just because it wasn’t a Super 8.
We still had to drive another 57 miles. Yellowstone is a massive park, the 8th-largest in the U.S. (and 2nd-largest in the continental U.S.), covering almost 3,500 square miles. So in order to explore it properly, you need to plan to spend at least a couple of days. And since so many of the main attractions require a good-sized drive to reach them, it’s even better if you can stay somewhere inside of the park in order to minimize travel time.
If you’re going to travel to Yellowstone, it requires you to perform at the Disney Parks Level of Trip Planning. The primary places to stay outside Yellowstone are West Yellowstone, Montana (31 miles from the geysers), and Gardiner, Montana (57 miles from the geysers). You can also use Jackson, Wyoming as a base of operations to visit both the Tetons and Yellowstone, but it’s 114 miles to the geysers one-way. And if you’re visiting in the summer, that’s high tourist season so all of the hotels will jack up their rates somewhere between taking out a second mortgage and turning over your first-born child.
There are several places to stay inside the park. Most of them provide generic lodging with bare-bones amenities, with the primary benefit being location. Some of the lodges offer nicer rooms and more modern amenities, but of course you’ll pay a premium for that. Given that most visitors want to see the geyser basin (Old Faithful being the most famous), there are three separate hotels located here: the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, the Old Faithful Lodge & Cabins, and the granddaddy of them all, the
Old Faithful Inn.
Built over the course of one winter (!) from 1903 to 1904, the Old Faithful Inn is the oldest and perhaps the most famous National Park lodge in the country. If you want to stay here, you need to make a reservation AT LEAST one full calendar year in advance. With that in mind, I’d actually reserved a room here in May 2014, before we’d even left for our Grand Canyon trip that summer.
If you can manage to snag a reservation, you have a few choices. Some of the rooms were “modernized” and have luxurious amenities, such as a private bathroom in your room. We booked a room in the historic lodge. On the plus side, this meant we got to stay in the oldest part of the hotel, built at the turn of the century. It’s actually one of the best deals in the area—for a little over $100 a night you get to stay within a stone’s throw of the geyser basin. Even better, there’s no restriction on the number of people in a room. They happily allowed me to book all 6 of us in one room, even offering a crib for the baby.
On the downside, the bathrooms are shared. Showers and toilets are located in a central room down the hall. So it’s like living in a college dorm.
Well, somehow Julie and I both managed to survive living in a college dorm for four years. So for the chance to stay in the historic lodge in such a good location at such a great rate, we were perfectly happy to share a bathroom with strangers.
The Old Faithful Inn was the primary inspiration for Disney’s Wilderness Lodge. Disney drew from other National Park lodges, of course, but it was very easy to see where many of the ideas came from as we toured this building. As I mentioned earlier, these photos are not in chronological order. If that’s going to be a problem for you, please schedule an appointment with
my assistant and I will give you a full refund on this Trip Report.
Here’s the main entrance. Look familiar?
View from the parking lot:
The building is made entirely from lodgepole pines. You don’t see craftsmanship like this anymore.
I’m sure most of you have experienced a sense of awe upon entering some memorable buildings in your lifetime. I’ve even experienced it at Disney resorts: the Wilderness Lodge, Animal Kingdom Lodge, and Aulani all made me stop in my tracks when I first entered, just to soak in the sights in quiet amazement. Certain buildings force you to admire the skill and vision it took to make such a grand project a reality. I felt that exact same sensation when I entered the Old Faithful Inn. It’s a place that quite literally made my jaw drop.
The lobby:
See the writing desks tucked away to the side on the second floor? You’ll find the same thing in alcoves on the second floor of the Wilderness Lodge.
Live piano music every evening:
There’s also a balcony to afford guests a view of Old Faithful when it erupts.
Side stairway:
You can see what I meant when I said that everything was made from lodgepole pines. It gives the building such amazing and distinctive character.
This is a first-floor hallway leading to some of the rooms. I thought it looked like something out of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
And this was our hallway.
Finally, here was our room.
Very tired baby:
Although we didn’t have a private bathroom, we did have a sink. So we could still do a lot in the room without needing to go down the hall. The shared bathroom really wasn’t an issue at all.
You’ll be seeing more of this building later, but it was unique and distinctive enough that I wanted to spend a little time highlighting it. We all had a blast exploring the building. It felt like there were little hidden alcoves all over the place, giving the same sensation we love about Disney: that feeling of adventure, that something else was just around the corner, ready to be discovered.
Coming Up Next: As much of those 3,500 square miles of Yellowstone as we can squeeze in.