Yellowstone RV Trip Tips and Camping Guide

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we're talking about tips for taking an rv trip to yellowstone national park we did an rv trip to yellowstone national park this last fall and we had an incredible time we spent almost a week there and it was one of the best weeks of our of our whole trip it's a great park to take an rv a lot of times when i go to a park and we have an rv or a van or something i think you know am i is this going to be hard to drive or am i going to be a hindrance to everyone else not the case at yellowstone every other vehicle is an rv so it's just so many a line of rvs and vans rvs and vans that's you know there's there's a lot of cars too but but there's more rvs it seems like at yellowstone than any other place we've been absolutely and they have taken that into account and because of that there's uh there's special considerations made for rvs so every parking lot you'll find is going to have an rv lot or rv spaces and it's you know a lot of times you get these national parks and it's like where am i going to hard to get in there yeah how am i going to get him how can i get around this corner yes not the case it's great they do have in many of the attractions they have a completely separate rv parking lot that's not even connected to it's not even in the the regular part and they're generally so big that they're not full even with the car that is full yes which is nice because that gives you the opportunity to park whereas a lot of the cars are having to circle around because they can't get into parking spots in the regular lot you'll be able to find a spot in the rv lot which is really great so let's talk about when you should go to yellowstone in your rv and we went the last week of september which honestly is probably a week later than you should go because we got lucky that it wasn't super cold or snowy it was cold one day and it didn't snow one day but it was very but we left the day the day we left was the day that a lot of things were shutting down and they start to winterize the park and right and we didn't see any snow the whole time but there there are years when you will have trouble that last week so i would say might be cutting it close anytime in september it's probably a good time to go because the crowds are going to be much less and you're going to get through stuff the weather's going to be better it's not going to be hot right and you're going to see some amazing stuff you may see some fall colors too which we did get to see yeah definitely april may is also ideal as well on the early side but again depending on the weather like you said you may still be getting quite a bit of snow even in in april and may um i mean we're talking about montana wyoming here yeah and so it's the weather is is can be pretty wonky yeah even just in a day you can get nearly all the seasons practically um so there are lots of options really from when to go there and you can go um obviously in the winter times you have to have special vehicles and um you know a lot of the roads are going to be closed and a lot of the attractions are going to be closed so there's there's definitely advantages to going when everything is still open i mean this is the most popular park in the united states over 4 million people um go to this park it was the first national park so it's definitely the most popular and the one that everybody wants to go to so when you're going to a yellowstone vacation the first thing you need to really consider is where are you going to park your rv like what is your strategy because this is going to be difficult and you have a couple options you can try to get a campground in the park or you can try to get a campground out of the park and we've done both my preference is to get a campground just out of the park and in west yellowstone would be the place and in west yellowstone the koa there at the west gate is a really nice it's a really nice giveaway it's really nice campground and better than a lot of the other koas that we've been to we did quite a few this was probably the one of the best if not the best one so the problem with being in the park is twofold first is that most of the campsites have no services so there's no electric none of that and if you're gonna be there for a long time you you're gonna you're gonna want that likely unless you you know have other arrangements depends on your rv but ours we needed to get the electric hookup and so we we had that there the second reason is that yellowstone is such an enormously big park that a lot of the campgrounds in the park are actually further away from the main attractions than the campgrounds outside of the park so some of the campgrounds in the north inside yellowstone you might think are good but they're actually further old faithful than the westgate koa so really look at the map and on our blog we have a list of you know attractions and there's a map that shows everything you can kind of map that out and see west yellowstone the city of west yellowstone exists for a reason and that reason is it's easier to get to a lot of the attractions from there right than the park on top of that when you're camping out there you're basically in a city and not a national park so at night you have restaurants you have gas you have grocery stores you can restock every day if you're camping in the park you have very limited options and if you want to get something you have to go back out to west yellowstone anyway to get your supplies so you might as well just stay out there rather than have to pay higher prices or do that in the park exactly yes and then the other thing that you need to think about is like you just started talking about is planning your route um where you're going to go you have to realize like you said this is one of the largest national parks and it changes a lot there's a lot of change in elevation uh you know you're going through through mountain passes with drop-offs with no railing you're going to be going through a lot of different areas and you have to be prepared for that so you have to plan your route because there's not access for all vehicles out at all places as well as you go into some of those mountain passes you do have to think about that um as you're driving through and some of the roads will be under construction likely correct so check and you'll know well in advance which ones will but check and see if they're working on any because it is basically a figure eight the loops and if everything's open you can just do the loop and then do the other loop but if one of those roads is closed then you're gonna have to double back and it can take from one end to the other it can take hours to get from one end to the other especially if there's traffic or if there's bison in the way so you really want to be efficient with your time there so you don't waste your days and figure out where you want to be and what you want to do one thing that we would recommend that we did is the very first day the very first thing you do close to sunset drive out to lamar valley which is in the north and that is where the main population of wildlife is the bison uh are just in huge numbers out there huge numbers actually we were driving down the road and there was kind of a bison felt like a stampede they all came down the hill right down front of our area down into the into the the valley and you'll see so many bison in lamar valley that when you see one in the rest of the park you won't be tempted to stop because you've seen them already they'll say yeah i saw a big stampede of them and you'll see in the rest of yellowstone like in your old faithful area if somebody sees a bison they'll pull the car off to the side to look at it and you can tell they haven't met the lamar valley because if they'd seen what's in lamar valley they would not be impressed by one by one lone bison standing off to the side so save yourself all that trouble go to la marbella first and then you won't feel like you have to pull off every time you see a bison and you'll you'll just save a lot of time because you're going to see something more spectacular right at the beginning yes and earlier uh we were talking about um the when was the best time to go to the park and part of that also is for your comfort level as well and that is you really need to prepare for the huge changes sudden changes in in weather at the park as well we brought layers because you'd start out in the morning and literally just be freezing with gloves and all kinds of jackets and scarf and a hat and all kinds of stuff and then as the day went on you were going down and down and then you were down to just like you know a t-shirt and then in the evening it starts to cool off against you putting everything back on but also keep in mind uh you know for your comfort level as well in your rv is to you know if you if you make sure that you you have heat or you know a way to cool as well if you need to for for your nighttime comfort as well yeah a couple of the tips i'd give you are that when you're driving into yellowstone you'll be tempted to think oh i better get gas here because there probably won't be gas right near the park if you're staying in west yellowstone that's where the cheapest gas is so those gas stations you see a half hour out from west yellowstone they're more expensive than the ones in west yellowstone west yellowstone is the cheapest gas in the entire region and so just wait until you get there we just filled up every morning leave the koa head to the gas station drill up on gas drove in drove out you're good to go you're only about a couple miles from the park entrance once you get gas there so super simple and it's an easy access to the rest of the part yeah and it's actually a great way to enjoy the park uh you don't have to worry about uh you know food and drinks or if you need to rest or whatever along the way you can you know sit and have your lunch in the parking lot in your rv that's one of the great things about doing that in a car you can pack a lunch but you know you can't have a hot meal in a car but you can in your rv there's a lot of different reasons like that that um are just going to make it much more comfortable it's much more economical as well as far as your lodging is concerned for yellow for visiting yellowstone because lodging can be really expensive as well so it was it was really nice economical way of it's not like it's you know it's not so much cheaper but it's definitely worth the price difference right yeah yeah so if you're considering a yellowstone rv trip we highly recommend it uh we got some other videos and blogs on our our website and on this youtube channel check those out we'll give you more tips on actually the sites you can see at yellowstone but we just wanted to let you know that an rv trip to yellowstone is a great idea and one that we highly recommend

Channel: Grounded Life Travel

Views: 2,290

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: rv travel vlog, national parks road trip, rv travel videos, full time rving, rv life full time, rv living full time with kids, rv camping for beginners, yellowstone camping, yellowstone rv camping, yellowstone rv park, yellowstone rving, yellowstone rv trip, yellowstone rv tips, yellowstone national park, yellowstone road trip, national parks road, national parks road trip of a lifetime, visiting yellowstone in an rv, camp at yellowstone, yellowstone rv campgrounds

Id: RquMhIAI-Oo

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021