10 things NOT to do when driving in Yellowstone

hey there my name is matt and i am located in yellowstone national park right now and behind me you can see the grand loop road you'll see some cars driving by this is the main road that goes around the park one of the most common questions i am asked is about driving in yellowstone people who are visiting yellowstone are really having a hard time understanding the size of it and they don't really know how to get around and what to expect and so in this video i want to tell you 10 don'ts 10 things not to do if you're driving in yellowstone national park so the first don't is a rather obvious one don't speed okay so the speed limit throughout the park is 45 miles per hour in most places sometimes it's a little less now in a lot of places you can go faster than 45 the roads are straight enough that you could go faster than 45 anyway so why do you think they have a 45 mile an hour speed limit for the wildlife okay this is a way of protecting the wildlife because you will get wildlife that comes and runs out in front of you occasionally so please be a responsible traveler and go the speed limit 45 please do not speed okay the second thing is don't worry too much about gasoline so a lot of people that ask us questions are very worried about running out of gas in yellowstone national park now you might save a few cents if you fill up outside of the park before you come in but even if you fill up even if you wait until you're inside the park there are plenty of gas stations so there are many gas stations all over all the major stops there's gas stations so you're really never very far away from gas in yellowstone national park okay now the third thing is don't expect to have cell coverage here there's virtually no cell coverage in yellowstone national park so if you do run out of gas or if you break down and have car problems you're not going to be able to call anybody for help so you're going to have to just track down somebody flag him down on the road and ask him to help you out maybe they can take you to the next stop where you can talk to a mechanic or something like that and get some help talk to a ranger there are rangers that are driving around the park all the time so you might be able to see one of them anyway so if you do have problems you're really not far from help but you're not going to be able to call for help the cell coverage is very spotty like there are some spots where you might be able to get a little bit of cell coverage but my daughter was trying to text me yesterday at old faithful and it was just too unreliable okay the fourth thing is don't expect to have beautiful vistas everywhere you drive yellowstone is beautiful but a lot of it is forest i mean probably like 90 percent of the park is actually forest and so a lot of the time while you're driving around you're actually just driving through lodgepole pines now they do open up into some beautiful vistas occasionally obviously there's canyons in yellowstone um the geyser basins actually provide some of the best vistas because as you're driving through you'll get these openings because the trees can't grow where the geysers are so you'll get these nice openings that you can look around and then there's the yellowstone river that you'll be driving along well plenty of rivers plenty of different rivers that you'll be driving along in yellowstone so don't get me wrong there's beauty as you're driving but if you're expecting kind of like everywhere you go to be gorgeous it's not really like that in the car you're driving through a lot of lodgepole pines and forests okay the fifth thing is kind of on that same note don't forget to notice the small little pine trees as you're driving so as you're driving on the roads you'll notice sometimes that there's some very small pine trees and then there will be signs in front of them that say re-seeded by the wildfires of 1988 or some other wildfires there's been wildfires there's wildfires every year in yellowstone the most famous ones were the summer of 88 but there's been many wildfires that's how that's whole that's how these lodgepole pines reproduce and so it is kind of interesting that you'll see these little baby trees as you drive throughout the park and just remember that is a result of forest fires which kind of clear out the under growth and the all the debris and stuff like that and it causes the pine cones that drop from the pine trees to pop open and reseed and that is nature's way of cleaning up the park okay the sixth thing is don't drive too slow so i don't want you speeding but then there's also signs that say hey if you're driving too slow you need to pull off on some of the little pull outs they'll have pull outs every once in a while they'll say pull off on the pull out so that other people can drive through so you need to remember that it does take a long time to drive around the loops so you don't want to slow traffic down even more than necessary so don't drive so slow that you're driving everybody nuts and creating a big chain be considerate get over let everybody through okay on the same vein here number seven is don't expect to get around quickly so yellowstone is laid out in a figure eight we call it the upper loop and the lower loop this is actually called the grand loop road but we never really called that it's just upper loop and lower loop and it takes about two and a half hours to drive around the lower loop if you're just driving that's not stopping for anything any attractions or anything like that it's just driving time to get around the lower loop upper loop is just a little bit smaller takes about two hours to drive around the upper loop if you look at it on the map there's kind of main points stops on each of the loops there's kind of four main points on the upper loop and six main points on the lower loop of course since they're merged two of those points are actually the same right where they merge like canyon and norris those are the same ones okay my point here is that it takes about 30 minutes you can count on about 30 minutes to get from point to point so again that's two and a half hours on the lower about two hours on the upper now you might get through faster you might get through slower but just plan on about 30 minutes from point to point okay the eighth thing is don't expect to avoid traffic jams so traffic jams come in all shapes and sizes in yellowstone national park the most common is probably bison jams where bison literally just walk out in the road and stand there they just stand there and block traffic it's the funniest thing because they just act completely oblivious they don't care about you my mother calls them inconsiderate buffalo so we call those bison jams a lot of times the rangers will come and clear out those bison jams what's up guys okay now the next thing that might cause a jam is what we call a bear jam these were the original traffic jams in yellowstone because people would actually stop to feed the bears out of their car i've got a whole story about that in my audio guide for yellowstone but people would actually stop and feed the bears from their car by the way if you want the audio guide it's on my website we're on the rockies.com anyway today we call them bear jams if people are just stopping to look at the bears bears rarely you know stand in front of the road and block the traffic but they will be off on the side and people will stop and stare at that bear i mean because everybody wants to see a bear that comes the yellowstone right so if they see one it is going to cause a long delay and a bear gem okay and then the third thing that could likely happen is just simply construction they're always having to work on these roads they get a lot of damage because most of the year is winter and they're always it seems like they're always doing construction on the roads in yellowstone so be prepared for some traffic jams of one form or another at yellowstone okay the ninth thing is don't expect to find parking everywhere so the parking lots were designed probably back in the 60s would be my guess is when they last updated most of these parking lots that's when the park last got a that's when the national park system last got a huge influx of money from the government during the 50s and 60s during a program called mission 66 and you can imagine how many people visited in the 60s versus how many people are visiting in the 2020s and it is dramatically different so these parking lots were not designed to handle that many people and so don't expect to find parking everywhere you go a lot of them will fill up early in the day and they'll be pretty full throughout like nine like maybe ten to four they'll be pretty full so you know if it's full you just need to move on to the next thing that's one of the things my guide helps you out with i have a travel guide for yellowstone that will help you out and help you be prepared with the plan b in case your plan a falls through i'll give you the whole thing which ones to go to early which ones you can delay so check that out if you need a game plan okay and the final thing number 10 is don't get out of your car and challenge a bison to a fight like some guy did a couple of years ago in an epic drunken oh kind of uh craziness here this guy got out of his car and challenged this buffalo to a fight which almost charged him and the guy got in all sorts of trouble and i'm not trying to embarrass the guy but this is we have a whole video about dumb hailstone behavior because for some reason yellowstone just attracts some really crazy behavior out of people so anyway don't i shouldn't need to tell you this but don't get out of your car and challenge the buffalo to a fight okay and i have one more bonus tip here which is to check out the article that i wrote about driving in yellowstone i told you i got a lot of questions on this so i created an article about driving in yellowstone on my website we're in the rockies.com i'm going to put it in the description here a link to it in the description underneath this video if you don't know how to access it click on the little read more if you're on a desktop if you're on a phone over here click on the little down arrow and you'll see it'll drop down a bunch of text with some links and stuff like that i'm gonna put that in there for you as a resource because it'll it'll cover things like cell coverage and gas stations and all that that you need to know so feel free to check that out thank you so much for watching and until next time go west young traveler

Channel: We're in the Rockies

Views: 76,781

Keywords: How to get around Yellowstone, Yellowstone national park tips, driving in yellowstone

Id: aL6-K7wThpA

Length: 10min 49sec (649 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022