Yellowstone: A family’s guide to surviving the great American vacation
Yellowstone is amazing, and it stands in our collective American minds as the quintessential family vacation. Even people from other countries consider it the great American family vacation. Connecting with nature, seeing the county, and experiencing some truly staggeringly unique geological features is what we all hold as the value of this National Park treasure.
As you plan for your family trip to Yellowstone, I’m sure you are searching the internet for tips, lodging, itineraries, and most importantly some sort of reality check on how hard/easy the trip will be for your unique family. All families are NOT created equal, and every family has its own limitations, needs and pace.
With that in mind, we’ve broken down this Yellowstone Family Survival guide with advice for two family types: the Naturalist Family and the Go-Go family.
Family type: The profile of the Naturalists (the divers)
You have elementary aged kids and maybe a young teen. The kids are used to hiking 1-2 miles with only minor whining. You all have backpacks that are always ready to go with reusable water bottles and you make some stabs at packing healthy snacks. You participate in the Junior Ranger program and have a National Parks passport. One of your park goals is to see wolves and you already installed the wolf finder app on your phone. You have a decent understanding of what carbon sequestration is, and you tend to read every interpretive sign and your children put up with you asking scientific inquiry questions for at least half the stop before they start ignoring you and rolling their eyes. You all love seeing animals and dramatic natural spectacles. You might be open to horse back riding, but you are appalled by the ATV rental companies.
Family type: The profile of the Go-Go’ers (the flitters)
You have elementary aged kids and maybe a young teen. The kids are cool with walking short trail to a high value payoff destination. And let’s be honest, so are you. You used to backpack in college, and you wonder what happened to you. A hike for the sake of hiking would start a shit storm of whining from the kids. You bought disposable water bottles at the store and it’s unlikely anyone actually remembers to bring them on any of the forays out of the car. The back of your car is covered in an orange haze of goldfish cracker powder, and there is a gummy worm jammed in the receptacle side of the seat belt requiring surgery with a fractured popsicle stick. No one wants to read an interpretive sign, expect for basic orientation, and minor curiosity. The kids are spiritually disturbed by the lack of cell and data connection in the park. You all love seeing animals and dramatic natural spectacles.
Getting there: Flying into Bozeman and the Bozeman area
We planned our trip for mid-June. There was nothing special about our selection of that date, except that our work schedules lined up and we could shed a teenager who had a weeklong overnight camp to attend. We were taking our two little boys, ages 8 and 5, who had no real idea what Yellowstone was, or understood any of the Yogi, Boo-boo and Mr. Ranger references we were making. However, when we mentioned free-ranging animals, we had their undivided attention. Their undivided attention swiftly became divided when we started to do the math for them on how many weeks away the trip was.
We booked flights from Portland, OR to Boseman, WY. While many carriers fly into Bozeman, Alaska Airlines has frequent and inexpensive daily flights. During Christmas Alaska Airlines has a one-way regional cities sale and we were able to pick up tickets during this sale for $89 each round trip. So for $356, cheaper than the gas it would have taken us to drive, not to mention the therapy bill from spending that much time in the car with the children, we would arrive at our destination in less than two-hours.
The Bozeman airport is a small woodsy-themed regional airport that hosts several on-site car rental agencies. We rented a tall and spacious Jeep Cherokee for 5 days. The bill hurt a bit, $420. Even the compact cars the prices were close to $350. This was one of those destinations where the rental rates are commodity based – because there is no way to enjoy the park with your family without renting a car.
Lots of room in the back seat increases odd of peace.
Our flight arrived the Bozeman airport at 6:50 pm, and we knew the little boys would be tired. We applied some hard-won travel wisdom and rented a place in Bozeman for that night with the intent to get an early start for our two-hour drive into the park the next morning.
VRBO/AirBnB places are abundant in the area and we find this kind of rental is superior to low-cost hotels. We can all spread out, the boys could have their own rooms and we save some money. Our VRBO that night, a second floor of a stunning Montana Ranch house, cost us $169. The mounted animal heads, and bear skin rugs that decorated the walls of the place provided endless topics of conversation and fascination for the boys.
The area around Bozeman is stunningly beautiful. The landscape is dramatic and majestic. Just about any direction you look could easily be the backdrop for a travel ad.
Bozeman itself has an ‘old made new’ funky feel. Touches from its frontier heritage mingle with outdoorsy, hipster trendy fashion sensibilities. We had a great breakfast that morning. This is a part of the country where they are serious about their pork products, beef and cornmeal cakes.
If you don’t want to fly, or can’t afford to fly, the road trip is your other choice. If you fit the Naturalist family profile this can be a nice time of family bonding and roadside stops. The Go-go family knows that this mode of travel will not be for them. If you are thinking about taking a road trip, consider the cost of gas, lodging and food the trip will require and balance it against the cost of flights.
Reality check 1: The park is freakin’ huge!
When you looked at the park through the lens of GoogleMaps the distances seemed trivial. They are not.
When we arrived at the park admission gate the packet of maps and papers we were handed which included a photocopied map of travel times within the park. This was the beginning of our education. Mileage distances in the park are irrelevant – it’s all about average travel times.
There are four entrances to the park. The North entrance is supported by the small tourist town Gardnier, the east entrance is more remote, located two hours from Cody, Wy, the South entrance is nested in Jackson, and the ‘popular’ entrance is supported by the tourist town of West Yellowstone. The roads that cut through the park and connect these four entrances are the only major roads through this part of the country. Getting around the park without going through the park is a mighty driving endeavor.
Park distances are expressed in miles, but don’t settle there. Travel time is the big factor to consider in your trip planning.
What’s the problem you ask? The park roads are simple two-lane wandering rural roads with no real shoulder improvements, and no passing lanes. Everyone funneling into the park at any given hour forms a convoy chain that travels together. If and when anyone sees an animal the whole convoy comes to a halt. If a herd of bison come onto the road all traffic comes to a halt. These convoys can be miles long. If you are in the back of the convoy you will have no clue what is happening and why traffic isn’t moving. With no shoulders and frequent drop-offs, passing isn’t just unsafe, it’s impossible.
So…this sounds bad, but in the great game of travel bingo, sometimes you are positioned in front of the convoy and get stopped as the herd of hundreds of bison pass around your car…and this is part of the magic of Yellowstone. During this exact event my wife said, “This is incredible, I can’t believe they let people in here unattended.”
Any entrance you choose will involve a slow drive to your furthest destination selection of the day. When you are done with the days worth of fun you make the same slow drive back to wherever you were staying, likely the place you started your day from. After two days we knew we needed a new place. The other thing about the park, the roads and slowness is that there are only certain places to eat, and with the uncertainty of travel times, this makes meal times with kids completely uncertain.
There are lots of places to stop along the way which allows you to take a break from your growing familiarity of the car in front of you and the family dynamics happening within. The waysides, both small and large, offer mind-blowing scenery and often trail access to a cool geologic feature. Now…odds are that at least some of the convoy will be stopping there also, and parking is often challenging. Some scenic stop areas have wide shoulders leading up to the parking lot. If you see people parking along the road, assume the parking lot is full and find a spot where you can. I know instinct drives us all to think that we will be the lucky one that find a spot right in front of the geologic feature, but more likely you will get stuck behind a rookie driver in large RV attempting to initiate a 37-point turn.
Now…this is all sounding pretty negative so far, but I’m trying to impress upon you the pace and expectation you need to settle into. For instance, if you were going to Disneyland you expect the lines. If you expect lines you make it part of the experience, and you chill out.
Solution 1 to all the down-sides of reality check 1: Get up and into the park early
To avoid the crowds and to get the most out of the park, which really means seeing animals and walking the trails at your own pace, you need to get up and on the park roads by dawn. Dawn is that space in time where the sun is still behind the hills and trees. Dawn is the time most elementary school aged kids are awake and bugging you to get up. Dawn is the time your alarm first goes off at home. Now I get it, the words ‘dawn’ and ‘vacation’ really shouldn’t be used in the same sentence, but this is the big tip to a mind-blowing Yellowstone vacation. If you are on the road to one of the park’s destinations between 6:30 am and 9 am you will see a lot of animals. Our early morning drive from Gardener to Tower-Roosevelt was magical. The morning sun on the dramatic landscape was staggering, and we stopped dozens of times along the way to watch animals who were foraging near the road. Many of these sightings included bears. Pretty intense! The early morning crowd of other drivers tend to be of a more chill nature, and it was enjoyable to be out of the car and chat with them while watching animals. The roadside turn outs are essentially vacant, so stopping and taking pictures and animal observing is easy.
By 10:30 am things start getting crazy on the roads. We tried to apply some knowledge from our previous midday fiascos and got arrived and settled into one of the major park destination hubs well before lunch. Mammoth Hotsprings, Madison, Old faithful, and Grand Village can get pretty crowded and crazy with people, slow traffic, long lunch lines, and clogged parking lots. It’s best to plan your early morning drive to conclude by 10 am at one of these large destination locations, enjoy some of the attractions, hike some of the trails, browse the shops, and plan on being the first in line when the park restaurants open at 11:30. By the time the lunch time crowd hits between 12-1, you will be gone and back out enjoying the park while everyone else is struggling with the lunch line.
The less traveled hubs like Tower-Roosevelt, Lake Village, and Fishing Bridge don’t get as crazy. They are also hubs that have less of the A-List attractions. As the week progressed we found ourselves enjoying these locations – and found ourselves actually relaxing, strolling and just chilling.
Once the lunch time crowd starts to clear out, things get hard for young families. Just about any destination you made it to by mid-day is now 2-3 hours away from your home base. That 2-3 hour drive has to be done its being done by everyone at roughly the same time…which means your 2-3 hour drive can easily turn into a 3-4 hour drive with some minor setback, like a slow RV or a herd of bison clogging the road. We got caught in this mid-afternoon car full of crankiness migration a couple of times. It sucked.
By 6:00 pm all the burger and pizza joints in the entrance towns are filled with completely fried out families with tired, hungry kids who are hours deep into their shit losing routines.
Solution 2: Don’t home base
More tips – how do you avoid this? Plan your drive back to occur after dinner time. Just like the early morning, by 6pm the park roads are almost deserted. This is also a great time for animal spotting. While this plan sounds super obvious, it isn’t usually very practical. Young families have burned out and need to be settled playing with their plastic Bisons in the bathtub by midafternoon. Staying out this late isn’t super practical. So what is plan B for success and happiness? Don’t home base. We are big fans of the home base strategy, especially when traveling with the kids. They can settle, spread all their stuff out all over the place, and get used to their surroundings – making for a happier trip. However, the geographic configuration of the park coupled with the people moving realities make home basing approach to lodging a liability.
Yellowstone lends itself well to a hopscotch loding approach. It seems ridiculous to move lodgings that are only 2 hours apart but this is the key to a happy visit that reduces the car time reality. Think about a feasible drive radius of 1 hour. If your hit list of destinations is greater than 1 hours of ‘yellowstone drive time’ plan on moving loding the next day. It’s hard to estimate how much time a destination will take to visit, and therefor how much you can cram into a day. This is very family specific. I’ll try and give you a bracket on a couple of different types of destinations based on a few family types.
A sample region:
Mammoth Hot springs –
The main natural features in this area are pretty dramatic. The secondary features, which require some short hikes, are along the lines of natural splendor and less geo-novel. There are shops, restaurants and a museum at this hub.
The naturalist family could easily spend 4 hours here exploring everything and diving into the geologic and historic education.
The Go-go family will exhaust their interest in 1 hour.
Old Faithful –
This is a pretty huge area with a lot of features, both natural and historic as well as a lot of short to medium hiking options. And let’s face it, it’s the postcard destination in the park. You can’t miss it, which is what everyone has in their minds, so the big features tend to be pretty clogged.
The naturalist family could easy spend two days in this area. The big A-list features occupying most of a day, and the secondary features and view points occupying the next day.
The Go-Go family could spend from 1-4 hours here.
Both families will enjoy the ice cream, hanging out at the lodge and the restaurants with larger food selections. The gift shops are larger also, but every shop in the park is run by the same vendor, so you will find the same items at all the shops.
So figure out which kind of family you are, and plan your time investment accordingly.
The Go-Go family will benefit from booking different lodgings every night and hop-scotching through the park. The Naturalists will also benefit from this approach, but will be less pressed by location burn-out as they are sucking the marrow out of the bone of each location.
Some friends of ours visited Yellowstone just a month after we did. They are a Go-Go family and decided to rent a camp trailer and hop-scotch through half the park via camp grounds. Aside from the slow roll of the trailer from site to site, this was a great option. Their 3 year-old, who was super not into the great Amercian family vacation, was another matter.
And speaking of the whole park…I know this advice goes against most of all the grains that we all contain, but you don’t have to see it all. In fact, trying to see it all will make your trip stressful and frantic.
How to decide which entrance?
The North Entrance (Gardiner) gives you easy access to the Mammoth Springs area. Reasonable (still long) drive-range boundaries would be to the Norris Geyer Basin to the south, and Tower Roosevelt to the East. If you stuck to this area, you’d be exposed to a wide range of staggering landscape, tons of animals, geothermal features, lakes, rivers, plains, mountains, and valleys.
The West Entrance (West Yellowstone) gives you access to the Madison, Norris, and Old Faithful destinations. This is one of the highest traffic areas in the park, so the inflow and out-flow traffic times need to be considered…get settled by rush hour, or stretch your activities to avoid it. If you stuck to this area you’d be exposed to staggering landscapes, lots of geothermal features, forests, plains, rivers, animals (less than the North, but really, still a glut of animals), and the A-list postcard features. This region also contains a lot of the big features of early park history - Yellowstone lodge being the star.
The East Entrance (Cody, Wy) gives you access to Fishing Bridge, Canyon Village and West Thumb Geyser Basin. This section of the park is very different from the rest. As you drive in from the east you pass through some the most mountainous parts of the park – the alpine and sub alpine vistas are stunning. If weather is threatening the region at all this area will see snow fall. Once you pass through the mountains you come out into a broad lake basin. The upper limit of your drive range is Canyon Village, which is a landscape centered around dramatic deep canyons and waterfalls. The southern boundary is West Thumb, an area filled with geothermal features. While the Canyon and Thumb areas can be busy, it’s nothing compared to the congestion around features in the West region of the park. The East entrance features have a more chill atmosphere, simply because there are less people visiting these areas. Is that because they aren’t as good? Nope. It’s simply the drive distances and the fact that the East entrance road is more limited by weather conditions.
The South Entrance (Jackson and Grand Teton) is really about the two-for-one approach to your National Park visit. Grand Teton is its own spectacular destination, but unfortunately, unless you are starting your trip through this entrance is a very impractical destination from any of the other entrances – the drive times are simply too long. I know…you are looking at the map and noticing that it’s really only 40 miles from the Teton’s to Old Faithful, and you can do it, but you are looking at a four hour round trip and 2 hours at the destination…a long day with tired kids. You might stretch to do the drive once, but you won’t be returning the next day to move farther into the park. If you are entering from the south, make the visit about the Tetons, and maybe a day trip to West Thumb, or a death march to Old Faithful, but there is a ton to do and see in Grand Teton…getting greedy will result in burned-out car weary kids.
Special note for efficiency hounds: Trying to cut congested drive times down by circumnavigating the park from the outside is a no-go. Unless you are passing through the park on your way to somewhere else, there is nothing to be gained by trying to drive around the outside. It’s too long, and quite literally there are some entrances that you ‘can’t get there from here’ in any practical manner.
Food:
No one is going to die from hunger in Yellowstone. The food choices inside the park are pretty standard, and unless you are booking reservations at the Yellowstone Lodge, you will be eating decent family-friendly fair. We are foodies, and love a good meal, but we are also parents and will eat cold ends of chicken strips left by unenthusiastic eaters. The quality of the food at the various destination centers in the park is somewhere between low-end diner food and Applebee’s.
Food outside the park range dramatically. Family friendly food joints abound, and many of them featuring some local ingredients that you just spent the day observing with great enthusiasm. Pizza, burgers, shakes, Italian food, and steak and potatoes are super easy to find. Farm to table?…not so much. Keep in mind though, you are in steak country and the local beef we had while outside the park was pretty remarkable. Especially on the Cody side of the park - These folks know a good steak! Food is expensive, but not State Fair expensive. A hearty lunch at one of the park lodge restaurants with protein, two sides and a fizzy drink will run $11-15. A hot dog with a side will run $9ish.
I mentioned this earlier in the article, but with inconsistent drive time, it would be beyond wise to pack the car a lunch/diner in case your control over time is taken away. After experiencing a 2-hour Bison related traffic-delay one day, we arrived at Old Faithful Village 2 hours after lunch time with screaming starving kids and a whole bucket of no fun while waiting in a long tour bus load infused line at the lodge restaurant. That experience of pure hell motivated us to stop early in the morning the next day and buy a crappy cooler and pack sandwich makings and juice boxes. The next few days of driving were way more fun and food secure as we could stop at one of the many picnic locations, eat at our leisure and run some of the car ya-yas off. I never want to be eating unromantic turkey sandwiches while on vacation, but in Yellowstone it was a life saver.
The Haydon Valley, or Lamar Valley – the myth, the magic and the triage.
If you have read anything about Yellowstone you will have seen that Haydon Valley and Lamar Valley are the hot spots for animals. This is true, but let’s dig in to what that means for your family vacation.
These places have a greater density of animals – but for your seven-year old, seeing 60 bison is really just as good as seeing 150 bison. You will, and can, see 60 bison anywhere in the park. Seeing 3 bears during your visit is striking and memorable. Seeing 6 bears is not anymore striking or memorable.
Logistics to get to these regions is worth considering. The Lamar Valley is on the way to Fishing Bridge. It’s a stunning and unique area and you will see a lot of animals, but the time of day will dictate how may and what kind. This is also a big wide-open area. Many of the animals you will see will require you to stop and use your binoculars. The Go-Go family wont’ have a ton of patience with this activity.
Haydon Valley is on the way to nothing. It’s a one-to-two hour drive to the place you eventually want to turn around, then drive one-to-two hours back. To be honest, this is only going to be a destination that the Naturalist family should shoot for. The Go-Go family is going to love the first 30 min of an animal encounter, but burn out on this region pretty fast.
If you are hoping to see wolves, these two regions will offer you the greatest odds. The kind of patient observation required to spot these animals is going to make a wolf sighting a freak accident for the Go-Go family. The Naturalist family will likely have a decent chance at success.
Triage – you will see animals everywhere in the park in absolutely beautiful settings. The Go-Go family should just skip attempts to reach the Lamar and Haydon Valleys. Even the Naturalist family will be animal replete if they didn’t reach these locations during their visit.
Photography –
I take pictures, a lot of them. I had some notion that I needed at high-end telephoto lens to take full advantage of the photo opportunities in the park. I have a Sony 6600 with a 18-105 and I was able to capture the landscape stunningly well. The animals? Well…not so much. I could have rented a gigantor lens and gotten some amazing animal shots. While in the park, I saw many, many lone men with gigantor lenses ‘bagging’ the animals. But I was not a lone man, nor do I want to be. I was there with my family, who have little patience waiting for dad to get the right shot.. If you want to take a photo trip to Yellowstone, make an effort to do that and rent the equipment and spend the time, but don’t try to blend it with family vacation.
Binoculars –
Yes…but. If your kids can’t use binoculars on a good day at home, your trip to Yellowstone won’t be a good place to start their training with an expensive, fussy, delicate tool. They will be frustrated, competitive and careless with the expensive tool. If you have them and they don’t, they will want them, which will lead to frustration and carelessness. If no one has them, and you just see what you can see with your unaided eyes, you will still be completely overwhelmed with fantastic up-close animal sightings.
What else is there to do?
Aside from hiking, stopping at unique natural settings, and seeing animals…what is there to do?
No, you don’t have to feel bad about asking this question. Even the Naturalist family will want to switch it up a bit on a long trip.
North entrance: If it’s summer, there are two swimming holes that would be worth checking out. Why summer? In Yellowstone, it’s not about the water temp. Both swimming holes are in spots that have a mix of thermal and fresh water coming. Most of the year the temperature is just right. The seasonal threats to swimming are the water levels. If you see posted warnings about water levels take them seriously – the calm and peaceful river can turn into a raging torrent of death even after a slight rain. If the season and timing are in your favor, you will want to hit the swimming holes early or late – while there is plenty of room in the river, the parking lot is pretty small and there aren’t good options for overflow.
Gardiner (North Entrance): Has ATV, river raft, horseback riding and ziplining options for a family action break. Prices vary, and most all of these options take place outside the park. Don’t let that stop you though – the area surrounding the park is still some of the most stunning landscape you will have even see. We booked a 2-hour horseback riding trip with a local ranch, and had such a great time we did it again the next day for a longer time.
Cody (East entrance): Cody is about an hour from the park entrance, but has a number of non-nature things for the family to do. The Buffalo Bill Western museum is worth about an hour stop for the Go-go family and 2-3 hours for the Naturalist family. The ‘Old Trail Town’ stop is also about an hour of family entertainment. The furnished pioneer cabins, the stacks of antlers, two-headed calf, wild bunnies, and grim historical stories will capture up everyone’s attention.
Cody also has a nightly rodeo with a dinner option. We didn’t do this, but looked closely at it. All our kiddos bedtimes were sooner than the showtimes. The Buffalo Bill Dam is a quick stop that has a small visitor center, and a striking overlook into a dramatic canyon; the typical WPA era celebration of man’s domination of nature – good stuff! It’s a 20 min stop for a family. The Cody area also has many ATV, river raft, horseback riding and ziplining options for a family action break.
Words conclusion and hope
Hopefully you can make good use of all the information in this post and not just survive, but enjoy, the great American vacation with your family!
Tips for visiting YellowStone
Get into the park early!! Everything wonderful in Yellowstone that is animal related happens before 10 am and after 6pm.
It’s almost impossible to see the park in 1 day - and driving through the park to another destination will be SLOW, but not a bad idea if you want to nibble, but not settle in.
3-days is a perfect minimum amount of time to see the park.
Move lodging locations if you want to really experience the different regions of the park. Drive times make the ‘home-base’ lodging strategy hard on a family who wanted to be out in the park doing, and not in the car.
Bring food for the car. Again, drive times can be long, and, inside the park, food is only available at the park lodges.
Lodging outside the park is a great idea. The whole area, even outside the park, is stunningly beautiful.
You will see animals!
Parking at popular way stops can be challenging. If you see a line of cars parked along the shoulder preceding the turn for a scenic wayside, go ahead and park along side the road with everyone else and walk to the destination. Getting stuck in a full parking lot jammed up with traffic and pedestrians will not only waste time and raise stress in the car, but also be a bummer, as turning around on congested roads will be very challenging.
