What to pack for your Yellowstone vacation!

all right welcome to our channel here um we are standing outside at cabela's right now one of our subscribers asked us to do a video on what we would take to yellowstone with us on a trip so justin mckamey this is for you we appreciate you commenting on our videos um and if you're watching this uh if you're one of our subscribers please leave a comment as well what you might like to see in the future from us uh and if you're brand new to the channel here please click that subscribe button so my wife and i talked about this a little bit and we thought okay a lot of times i go to yellowstone and i'm just really in a hurry to get there and to go see as much as i can and i just want to have fun and so i'm not always the the best prepared for our trips i'll be honest with you um and but my wife on the other hand she's always kind of thinking about comfort and survival so she makes sure we have water and food all the time and she's more thinking about some of those details where i'm thinking about where we're going and camera equipment and things like that so we decided we're going to come here to cabela's and put together a little packing list for you for yellowstone if you're not comfortable you're not having a good time so here's something i want to suggest is yellowstone grand teton glacier all those places the temperature can vary by 40 degrees and so i kid you not you could need this in the middle of the day like a sun hat and you could use a coat at night i i also one of my very favorite things is just a hoodie you know when we travel in the summer i don't normally need to grab a coat but if you're going there after september yes grab a coat on your way out door make sure you have that with you but i grabbed some columbia things just because one of my first jobs and i was in colleges i worked in a sporting goods store and i bought columbia gear and it lasted me for years you've heard me before talk about water cersei you will not regret getting a yeti um i have this exact cup now i don't take this hiking of course it's a tumbler but i do take it to work every day but i do carry a bottle like this around when i go hiking so yes they're a bit pricey but you can put a few ice cubes in there and you'll have cold water for 12 hours it's amazing here's another suggestion are just these little disposable ponchos um i am the type of person that does not like to own a lot of things unless i regularly use them and a poncho is not something i use regularly however storms blow in and out of the national parks like that and so you know you don't need that much space to pack a disposable poncho and they come in so handy when that does happen and then you can just throw it away and not worry about it we got caught in a rainstorm at old faithful last time it's quite memorable nothing can ruin a good hike like bugs you know i think about mosquitoes coming out in the evening but at ferry falls and what was the other one mystic falls and mystic falls heard we've heard multiple comments about their hike being ruined by the bugs so we've got the skitter repellent and as we were checking this out another shopper pointed this out he said it is incredible so we're going to take his word for it because he's like oh yeah i use it when i go horseback riding they never bother me so we're going to check this out the lotion instead of a spray um yeah it works really well looks like it's smaller to pack around and then just another thing just you know any sort of sunscreen is important it's not uncommon to be really concerned about wild animals when visiting these parts and rightly so there are bears there and so people ask questions about pepper spray now if you can see here they are completely sold out of their bear spray and and we're kind of curious we've never purchased bear spray but we're thinking we're going to start having bear spray with us when we go and so we're going to order some we're going to test it out and make a whole other video all about bear spray because if we're noobs about bear spray maybe you are too and we'll learn about this together all right let's talk about footwear which is better if you are going to yellowstone or grand teton and planning to do just the typical old faithful boardwalks jenny lake those are very um very groomed trouts a lot of them are boardwalks and so i would recommend a tennis shoe not a hiking boot these would be much more comfortable and you know you are both parks you're spending a lot of time in a car this is way comfortable to have while you're driving around versus one of these the only time i would recommend boots like this is if you're going to be doing more off the trail where you're going to be getting in water and mud you know this will protect your feet from getting wet but you're doing just the typical tourist attractions go with the trail runner okay i just showed you a trail runner and then i found this i've been a runner for 20 years i always buy asics they last forever and they're so comfortable and they are a great shoe for a great price they're not spicy okay i'm jumping in on this one because this one means a lot to me we've gone swimming at the boiling river in yellowstone quite a bit and also some of the places in grand teton like uh string lake and the the rockstar bay and colter bay and the rocks have torn my feet up so the next time i go i am definitely taking a pair of swim shoes that i can walk around in the water uh without without kill my feet um so if you had some sandals you could certainly bring those and you would be fine uh but don't really wear sandals much so these are they don't stay on well in the river they float away sometimes okay i'm not a sandal wearer so i wouldn't know but these are much cheaper anyway so i'm totally gonna buy these so that the next time i go these places are gonna be comfortable and look how cool these are they like bend up real easily so like those would fit a suitcase so easy yeah good deal definitely i've got some hiking poles right here now personally i've never used hiking poles but they are very popular and and this is a special ed teacher in me if you are unstable on your feet at all get some we don't want you tipping over and hurting yourself on your trip you want to be safe so that's like the number one priority but we talked to the salesman a little bit about what he'd recommend since i don't personally use them and of course he recommended the expensive black diamond ones which i'm sure are very nice but these are like 169 these ones are about 25 so you know pick which one would be helpful to you but for a very affordable price you can have some hiking poles they they collapse down well they're light so they're not gonna take up a lot of space and and they're not gonna be heavy but you know think about your safety if you are unsteady on your feet and people really do like hiking with these hey it's our first bison sighting right here okay you're gonna want to be prepared with snacks you cannot go wrong with beef jerky it travels well it doesn't take up much space keeps your sugar level you know even which is great um what you don't want to do is bring something like this which has which is bulky a lot of the national parks have limited garbage cans and you do not want to be carrying something like this around my next tip is maps i love maps you've noticed in some of my videos on here that i use maps to show you where to go and i show you places about the parks in particular yellowstone you're off the grid when you're in the park so a map is nice now they're going to give you a basic map of the park when you go in through the entryway through the gate um and i've never used anything more than that but if you're a map person like i am you might you might want to order these and kind of study them before you go and have them on hand in your car while you're driving around i really do refer to the map quite a bit when i'm in yellowstone matt thinks i'm being a bit of a crazy woman but i do recommend if you are going to swim in firehole canyon at yellowstone that you have a life jacket i know as a child i got sucked under the water there and i've known friends that have had that happen it's a swift river with undertows and so bring i you know i don't care what kind you bring but just bring a life jacket you know boiling river i'm not that concerned it's real shallow and it's just a good idea to have a life jacket if you're going in that um fire hill canyon okay that rounds out cheryl's portion of the list which is all about survival and comfort cabela's has closed and they've kicked us out so you know we have actually more things to put on this list but we're going to include them in a link in the description here to our website we'll have a list of of all these things that we're talking about with links and stuff so you can check that out now we're going to move on to the fun part of the list my my section but before we do that i want to give a shout out to one of our subscribers another one another shout out here to shirley duncan we appreciate your comments on there it's been really great that uh it sounds like you you've been watching most of our videos and you've had wonderful things to say and um so thank you shirley okay we're going to cover the second half of our travel uh our packing list now and i'm sorry our videos seem to be long like we're both teachers and so we can't seem to cut our our time down i am used to teaching a three hour class at night a history class at the university and so somehow i got used to just babbling on and so we're sorry if we we go long on these videos but we are trying to give you as much good information as as we can to help you prepare for your trip so i am going to cover some of the more uh technical or technology what would you say um tacky things i guess for the trip and some things that are a little bit more kind of concerning fun okay so one of the things that we always hear about is uh animal where to find the animals and how to see animals in yellowstone this is a major interest of people and so we i've already done another video on where to find them but i want to share a couple things with you on how to get a better look at them and it may be worth it to you if you're going to yellowstone to spend a little bit of money to get a better look at the animals because a lot of times you're going to see like if you see bears or wolves they might be across the valley in lamar valley or hayden valley bison you'll be able to see up close but some of the other animals might be kind of far away so this is vortex diamondback binoculars i'm not going to pretend that i'm a binocular expert but these i used the last time i went to yellowstone and they were fantastic in fact um i just used them a minute ago to take a look up at that peak right there and they got in about that close on the zoom about about that close on the zoom on that peak so uh really good binoculars i thought they were fantastic i've recommended these in another video and uh would highly recommend these um now this is a scope that my father-in-law has and we've used this before at yellowstone as well to to scope a grizzly bear across the valley at lamar leopold and it comes with a tripod which is always a good idea if you're using a scope like that because it gets a little shaky when it's zooming in that close this zoom got just a tad closer to that mountain peak in the background than the last binoculars that i just showed you this one comes with a very nice case i mean this is a high quality product so you might want to consider something like that if you want to get a better look at animals if this is a real big deal to you now a couple years ago i traveled around and i saw about 20 national parks in one summer i saw 20 national park sites in one summer some amazing places around the west i was traveling for work and i drove about 6 000 miles between montana colorado utah wyoming and saw just some incredible places and totally regretted that i didn't have a decent camera to take pictures of some of these things i was taking it with my phone now since then the phones have come a long way and i've taken some really nice photos at yellowstone just with my iphone so you can do that but if you want to zoom in at all and take closer pictures of wildlife you're going to need something a little better so after my year of 20 national parks i had regret that i didn't have a good pho a good camera so i went out and i bought this canon rebel sl1 um now this is a tad this particular camera is a tad outdated but i have done some research on what the new what what the good new ones are and um you know i think if you're not into photography if you're just looking at buying your first camera the nikon kind of universally online the nikon d3500 is is the best model and again i'll put a link to that in our website here it's about five hundred dollars and if you're going to do it you want to get the zoom lens with it which is about another 100 because that's um this this one here it does zoom but it doesn't get real close the default lens is about 55 millimeter on that um and you can get a a better lens that's going to zoom closer and so that's definitely what i would recommend if you're gonna go with a camera like that they make these cameras that are like two thousand dollars so if you're really wanting to get into photography that that might be fine but i think most the people that i'm probably talking to on this channel are pretty amateur photographers by the way if you are amateur photographer um you want to take pictures with your phone in this direction instead of this direction when you're on your your trip okay these just tend to print better and look better to the eye now if you don't want to spend five or six hundred dollars on on a camera like that but you want a little bit nicer pictures than with just your phone um here's what i would recommend i purchased this little zoom lens it's only thirty dollars and you attach it to your phone like this to your camera and take and then you focus it and then you take your picture that way now it doesn't like whoops it doesn't um it's not adjustable it doesn't kind of zoom in and out it's just fixed at a zoom lens but i was amazed i used it to take pictures of that peak there i'll put them on here and uh it didn't do too bad actually i was amazed you could certainly do worse than than buying this little this little gadget for 30 bucks um and it comes with a little tripod here which you probably would want to use because again when you're zooming in it's a little shaky and so um it's really not a bad gadget for 35 30 bucks i was amazed if you're wanting to take video again your phone is going to typically do a very good job of that except if you need to zoom if you're trying to get wildlife it's just so far away on your phone it's practically pointless that you would want an actual camcorder okay one that has a zoom this has a 32 zoom they make a huge difference so um consider that if you're if you're you know wanting to take a video and if you do by the way post your video on youtube and share it in a link with us because we'd love to see people's vacations and what really lights you up about yellowstone something else that you might want to consider is a little travel book i'm not going to go into great detail on this but this moon book was very very good it was written by a woman who is a transplant to the west and she's a very good writer and one of the things i like about it is it has stories in there behind the just stories about the parks and to me that's what really gets me going about the national parks and the thing that i really want to share with you the most is some of the stories behind the parks there's great great stories and i want to share stories about the american west and about its history and just some of the cool stuff that's uh that you might have never heard before so um this is a good one now we are working on our own itinerary and our own audio guide and so hopefully we'll have that out in 2021 um something that you could listen to while you drive around again so that i can share some of these these really cool stories um i mentioned i teach american history class at the university and so i guess i'm just kind of dying to share some of these things okay a couple two more things i think um some people will say bring like a phone charger here that is a portable charger i don't really think you need that yellowstone because you'll spend a fair amount of time just in your car driving around so i would just make sure you at least have a little uh outlet you know charger thing that you can plug into your car outlet thing and and connect it to your cable and keep it charged that way by the way there's really no phone cell phone connection in the park you can't get the internet on your phone while you're driving around in the park so it's not like you're going to be just using your phone a ton for navigation or something like that either so i don't think it's a huge issue on charging your phone as long as you have that and then the last thing i don't have it here actually the last thing is if you're going to grand teton as well you might want to consider inflatable kayak or paddle board maybe not at yellowstone so much unless you're going to be camping or staying around lewis lake but down in grand teton and a lot of people team up their trip to grand teton string lake there is uh you can there's a place i mean you can kayak and paddle board at string lake it's really popular there and we've done this before with the big huge kayaks and paddle boards big plastic ones that you have to have a truck to carry around pretty much um but we had never done that with the inflatable ones and we saw somebody there with the inflatable one and so we checked it out took a moment to check it out and it wasn't squishy or bouncy at all it was really nice it was a very good um paddle board that was portable nice and portable you could just take a little pump with you to pump it up so if you're going there i would recommend that you can rent them at dornan's but uh but again you're gonna have to have something big enough to drive them around in so you might want to consider that um and that's really all that i have i'm gonna put links to this on our website here in the description and you know you need to know that we do get a small commission if you purchase from one of our links um but it doesn't cost you anything extra and honestly this really just kind of helps keep us going i we really would appreciate it that if you if we give you any good ideas on this and you're gonna buy one of these items for your trip we kindly request you to buy it through one of our links just to give us um just give us a little bit of help here we're both working full-time we have four kids it's kind of crazy so uh we're just kind of trying to share our our love of these places with you um we certainly wouldn't recommend anything that we don't use or that we wouldn't you know want to buy ourselves so um anyway that's that's all we appreciate the suggestions for this video and if you have any other tips of what to pack for yellowstone please put in the remarks and if you have any other requests for videos please put that as well thanks

Channel: We're in the Rockies

Views: 68,411

Keywords: yellowstone, grand teton, yellowstone national park, what to pack for yellowstone, packing yellowstone

Id: SP9WaFe9acM

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020