Yellowstone National Park

[luvsJack]

We watched a show on the travel channel about Yellowstone and it really got me and dh interested in going there. We haven't even gotten far enough to say when.

I would love to price out a trip and sort of get an idea of the cost and be able to show dd some of the things we could include in the visit.

So, to anyone who has gone: Did you book some kind of tour, that planned your activities (like horseback riding, rafting, etc)? If so, where did you book through?

Did you do all of the planning yourself? If so, did you use any particular website?

Or did you just go and book everything when you go there and decided what you wanted to do?

TIA

 

[minkydog]

We watched a show on the travel channel about Yellowstone and it really got me and dh interested in going there. We haven't even gotten far enough to say when.

I would love to price out a trip and sort of get an idea of the cost and be able to show dd some of the things we could include in the visit.

So, to anyone who has gone: Did you book some kind of tour, that planned your activities (like horseback riding, rafting, etc)? If so, where did you book through?

Did you do all of the planning yourself? If so, did you use any particular website?

Or did you just go and book everything when you go there and decided what you wanted to do?

TIA

Ooooh, take me! take me!

We love Yellowstone. We took a camping trip out there 2 years ago.Stayed for 10 days and STILL didn't see it all. Yellowstone is a very popular destination, like WDW, and I would advise you to make your reservations as soon as you know your dates. It is not unusual for Old Faithful Inn to sell out a year in advances. Of course, there are several other hotels in the park, but OF is probalby the most popular.

Here is the official National Park site: www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm

Well, shoot. I can't seem to make a link. Anyway, you can get a lot of info from this site. I would highly recommend staying on-site. Yellowstone National Park is the size of Rhode Island. It takes a while to get from one side to another--forget touring the whole thing in a day. Not gonna happen. Be prepared for frequent stops due to wildlife in the road or people stopping to view wildlife OFF the road. Nobody goes anywhere fast. A buffalo jam can take a hour to break up. Be careful driving at night because you can't see them until you're right up on them,unless your headlights happen to catch their eyes.

There are several tours operated by YNP. One of the best activities is a Cowboy Cook-out that takes place in the Roosevelt area. You either ride horses or a covered wagon out to a back-country site where the cowboys barbeque, sings cowboy songs around a campfire, make coffee over the fire, and tell jokes. After an hour or so, you pack up and go back to the cars. It was the highlight of our trip. DD16 did the horseback ride and she got to see a mama bear with a cub, and a wolf, among other things. If you are interested you need to get reservations ASAP. This is one activity that is always full.

Good luck planning. If you can plan a WDW trip, you can plan a trip to Yellowstone. Take at least a week if you can, so you can also go down to Grand TEtons NP--it's totally different from YNP! And very beautiful!

 

[Jeanne B]

You might also want to scroll up to the "California & the West" board here on the DIS. I found it helpful when planning our California/Arizona trip a few years ago.

 

[Deb & Bill]

Xanterra manages all the lodging at Yellowstone.

We're going to spend Christmas in Yellowstone this year. We arrive at Mammoth on Dec 21 (the first night the hotel is reopened for the season) and spend one night there. We take the snow coach to Old Faithful for three nights at the Snow Lodge. Then snow coach back to Mammoth for three nights and head back to Billings to catch a flight home.

Things have changed in Yellowstone since the last time we went in Winter (1993). We used to live in Montana, so we went to Yellowstone frequently.

If you want to book a campsite, hotel room or cabin, you need to be looking into that right now. We were lucky enough to get about the last nights we needed at Old Faithful in early Sept when we decided to go.

They have new lodges at Canyon (in the past five to seven years) and we stayed at one of those in 2004. If you have ever stayed at the Wilderness Lodge, you will want to stay at the Old Faithful Inn which celebrated 100 years in 2004 and was the inspiration for Wilderness Lodge. Some of the lodging at the park does not have bathrooms in the room and you have to go down the hall to a community toilet/shower area.

Go to the Yellowstone website, check out the lodging info and make your plans accordingly. For special side trips, you'll wnat to make reservations for those ahead of time.

http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm

http://www.travelyellowstone.com/

 

[eliza61]

We're planning a trip for next August. At first I was a little depress because it means we won't do Disney but now I'm getting hyped for it.

 

[gotorightway123]

At first I was a little depress because it means we won't do Disney

 

[hrh_disney_queen]

We visit Yellowstone annually, but we have a cabin a couple of hours north of it, so we don't stay in the park that much. I just wanted to say that if necessary, West Yellowstone is a very cool town and has a lot of accommodations if you find yourself on that side of the park one night. If you have time, a drive out of the NE entrance and up the Beartooth Highway is a must do. Charles Kuralt (a famous travel reporter) deemed it "America's Most Beautiful Road." You can drive up and over to Red Lodge (which is also a cool little town) and if you start out in the morning, you can make it back over before night. It is closed between first good snow fall (October) and Memorial Day. (approximate)

Don't be depressed, Yellowstone is a GREAT family vacation, You will LOVE it.

 

[Judy from Boise]

you need to hurry over to the Disneyland section, and find the "California and the west board" it has tons of info. We also have trip reports on a separate board.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

Just got back from a massive road trip that included YS. We spent 3 nights there (not nearly enough to do everything we wanted to) and had a great time. We did all the planning ourselves, and stayed at loding in the park (two nights at Cayon Village and one at Old Faithful). We made some plans about what we wanted to see, the hikes we wanted to take and etc., but we didn't take any tours. However, we met a lot of people on tours who seemed very happy with them.

Here's some photos to get you excited:

 

[3boymthr]

Hi, We did YNP as part of a cross country tour a couple of years ago with the kids. I still have my itinerary and did it all myself. I'd say you don't need a tour outfit to do the planning for you. It will just cost you more money. I second pp that the NPS website was really good source as were a couple of guide books. As PP mentioned everything is booked thru Xantera and if you plan on going you need to book the rooms NOW (You can cancel if you decide not to go) but the activities can be booked in a couple of months but you definitely need to book them before you go.

We stayed 3 days at the Roosevelt lodge in one of the cabins and could have stayed another day but didn't feel like we missed a ton. There were a couple of areas that we didn't get to see but they were closed due to bear activity (the falls) or geyser activity - a hiking trail. We also did the cookout with 2 doing the horseback ride and 3 doing the wagon ride. It was a LOT of fun.

We saw a lot of sites - all the ones in the photos above plus the petrified trees, Old Faithful, The Great Divide (so neat there's a pool/pond where the water flows both directions out of the pool) but if you camp and you take an RV or rent one make sure you also take a car as there are roads in YNP that do not allow RVs.

Aside from Transportation to Yellowstone it's definitely not an outrageously expensive trip. Our cost was the rooms for three nights (@$65/night for a 6 person cabin) plus the cookout which was about $200 and then souvenirs and food which was on par for cost with any other tourist area. It's definitely worth the few extra dollars to stay inside the park if you can get the rooms as you can stay much longer at the sites as it takes a minimum of an hour to go from one area to another.

If you go a day south you can also hit the Grand Teton National Park. They have White Water Rafting trips there. Two days drive to the east is Mt Rushmore.

 

[minkydog]

OMG, y'all are making want to get in the RV and go! We might just have to go out there next summer.

 

[Deb & Bill]

PBS started the series about the National Parks by Ken Burns tonight. Very good.

 

[Hidden_Mickey]

We are going next July. We made our reservations this past June. I REALLY wanted to stay in the OF Inn and REALLY wanted a room with our own bathroom! We are also staying at Mammoth Hot Springs Cabins, Lake Yellowstone Hotel, Signal Mt Lodge in the Tetons, and Trapper Inn in Jackson Hole. DH panicked when I told him how many hotels we will need but once I explained that they are all about an hour apart with different things to see around them, he agreed to the itin. I looked at the sites mentioned above, went to the library and borrowed travel guides, and also bought some travel guides. I did a LOT of reading - for about a month (keep in mind I don't have a lot of time to read!) and studied the maps I got from AAA as if my life depended on it before deciding the itinerary and making any reservations. It was overwhelming at first, but the worst is over. I still need to make airline reservations, which I plan to do soon, and will make the cookout reservations a few months before we go. We may do rafting in the Tetons also. We watched the Yellowstone show on the Travel channel before deciding on the OF Inn and Lake Yellowstone Inn. I forgot to DVR the PBS show. I will have to catch the reruns.

 

[CPTTrips]

Here's a link to a good board - www dot forums.yellowstone.net - Also go to the YNET home link at the top of the forum page.

Stay in the park, get out of the car, and hike beyond the end of the pavement/boardwalks!

 

[DisTeach1]

We've done Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons twice now. It is massive, and like another poster, we changed hotels every few nights to minimize driving time. We stayed at Canyon, Old Faithful, Jackson Lake Lodge (Tetons), and Jackson Hole.

The Tetons were voted #1 park for viewing wildlife by the Travel Channel, and it's true...we saw a greater variety of animals in the Tetons including many moose.

The only "tour" we did is an all day horseback ride. We love to horseback ride but we are not group "trailride" type people. We booked a private ride with an outfitter who took us into the backcountry for a day...it was great and we saw a lot.

 

[jsmith]

My mother lives in Cody, Wyoming and my father was a professional guide for a company that did back country and Yellowstone tours for several years. Ive been to Yellowstone more times than i can count.
One of the things to remember when your planning is that hotels that look on the map like they are an hour to two apart-i.e Mamoth and Lake or Jackson Lake Lodge and Old Faithful-will be more like 4 or 5-the speed limit in all of Yellowstone and Grand Teton is 35 mph and there will be wildlife jams that make the worst city traffic look easy. and the high ways, while maintained-are only open 6 or 7 months a year and arent in the greatest of shape.
If you are going that direction there are some awesome things to see in Cody-the Buffalo Bill Historical Center complex is worth the time to stop and see and the cody night rodeo is great too.

 

[Pooh_Friend#1]

We got back from a week in Yellowstone in August. It was one of the best vacations I have taken. I got a lot of great tips from http://forums.yellowstone.net/

Make sure to check out the Boiling river and take a swim. Definitely one of the highlights from our trip.

 

[BriarfoxinWA]

We went through Yellowstone on our honeymoon 20 some odd years ago but haven't been since. I guess I'll have to put that on the list of places to go visit again!

One thing that always amazed me was how STUPID people are when in comes to the wildlife. We got caught up in a traffic jam where there were buffalo near the road. People were getting out of their cars and trying to walk up to them. They are not TAME and it's not a petting zoo!

The area is beautiful and the hot springs are amazing!

 

[eliza61]

We went through Yellowstone on our honeymoon 20 some odd years ago but haven't been since. I guess I'll have to put that on the list of places to go visit again!

One thing that always amazed me was how STUPID people are when in comes to the wildlife. We got caught up in a traffic jam where there were buffalo near the road. People were getting out of their cars and trying to walk up to them. They are not TAME and it's not a petting zoo!

The area is beautiful and the hot springs are amazing!

LOL. Isn't it amazing. A teacher I used to work with had the honor of going on a safari in Africa a few years ago. She couldn't believe the number of people who wanted to get out of the hummer to get a close up of lioness and wilderbeast. She kept yelling at people. "This is not Vegas, folks"

 

[luvsJack]

Thanks for all the replies! I am really set on planning a trip now! To the poster who posted the pictures: BEAUTIFUL!!

The cowboy thing sounds like so much fun and something dd and dh would love. And we will all love seeing the animals.

I am getting almost as excited about planning this as I would a disney trip (almost, not quite!).

Off to get some prices and get a budget started so we can pick some dates!!!!

I am going to print this thread and then go to any websites listed for info. Sounds like I will need a map too to locate the other places mentioned.

fun, fun fun!! I absolutely love planning a vacation, makes it all the more fun for me when it all comes together.