Yellowstone Trip Planner 2021 | Watch before visiting Yellowstone!

hey welcome to our channel yellowstone is big complicated and crowded a lot of people on our channel have told us that it's kind of a challenge to plan a trip to yellowstone national park so in this video we want to give you all the details that you're going to need to plan your trip we're going to try to simplify it for you and make it nice and easy i'm going to make you a promise right now this is longer than a typical youtube video so just settle in and listen it's going to save you hours of time because i know when i go to research at vacation normally i'm like pulling things from lots of different places and it takes me hours or if i don't put the time in before i kind of waste time on the vacation because i don't know the most efficient way to do it so just settle in grab a pencil and paper grab your map and and we'll give you some great information to really get you started on your trip to yellowstone now if you don't want to do that we do have a website we're in the rockies and on that website we have a guide just you can just buy it print it and then you don't have to listen to this whole spill but hang with us we have some good information for you today okay so consider this a beginner's guide to yellowstone a lot of people that watch our videos say that they get out their notepad and take notes while they're watching this so you might want to consider doing that plus we use maps a lot so i've put a link to the yellowstone park map in the description you might want to print that off and take notes as well my name is matt and this is cheryl and we have been going to yellowstone for over 30 years uh dating back to when we were kids and our parents took us there quite a bit so this is a place that's pretty special to us we're both educators cheryl teaches special education and i teach a night class at the local university so we have we really just want to share our love of yellowstone with you okay so in this video we are going to talk about pretty much everything you need to know to plan your trip like popular road trips popular airports where to eat where to stay when to make your reservations how long to stay for where to find wildlife popular sites all sorts of things like that so just hang tight and we will get to all those things okay the very first thing is just we want to talk about what yellowstone is really if you've never been you're probably watching this because you've never been to yellowstone so i just want to explain a little bit about what it is it's the world's first national park it was created as a national park in 1872 protected by the government the world the first time the first time ever that a government protected land for the benefit and enjoyment of the people and a large part of the reason why they did this was because of all the geysers there and the hot springs this was really unusual when explorers started finding these things they were really fascinated by them yellowstone has half of all the world's geysers in it which is absolutely amazing and so obviously there's the very famous old faithful geyser but there are just so many more there are about 500 geysers in yellowstone and they're so cool it's like you're on a different planet when you see these geysers they're incredible it is like a different planet that's exactly right so yellowstone's just been a park that has held a place in our imagination ever since uh people when they think of it you know they think of the geysers they think of bears they think of bison maybe the grand canyon of the yellowstone this yellow rock which where it gets its name in the past it's been called wonderland and of course jelly stone so this really holds quite a place in pop culture in our imagination now when you visit a lot of national parks a lot of them are kind of static they're kind of you know you're looking at mountains or uh cliffs or canyons or things like that yellowstone is quite an active place it's moving there's movement all over you'll you'll literally just be walking down the boardwalks and you'll see water shooting up out of the ground you'll see bison walking by bears running across the road in front of you so it's really quite an amazing place okay so getting to yellowstone for many of you yellowstone is really far away we're lucky we live in the west and it's about a four-hour drive from our home in utah but a lot of you probably are flying in and so many people do this as part of a big road trip to the west i just wanted to go over a few popular things that people do okay first of all yellowstone does go into a couple of different states like wyoming and montana but it's mostly in wyoming so just know that there are five entrances to the park there's the north there's the northeast there's the east the south which is coming in from grand teton and then the west which is the most popular entrance from west yellowstone exactly if you're flying in many people fly into bozeman montana some people fly south into jackson jackson is right outside of grand teton it's a real jackson hole is a famous place i always call it like the glitzy cowboy town it's it's western but it's upscale western um and then salt lake city airport is another popular place to fly in and then you drive and you head into the west yellowstone gate and that west yellowstone is probably one of our favorite places to stay mostly because it's close for us but west yellowstone is actually a city outside of yellowstone and it's the biggest city outside of yellowstone grand teton and jackson hole are bigger but they're further down you're an hour and a half two hours away from the park where west yellowstone is just you go right into the park there and it's by the lower loop where a lot of the attractions are so many people will do road trips so if you're coming you want to go see um if you're coming in from the east you can go see mount rushmore in the badlands and we are so excited we're going to go to mount rushmore this summer so look for our info on mount rushmore pretty soon if you're coming from california you can go through vegas you can go see zion which is another incredible incredible national park salt lake city and one of our favorite stops on the way on that road trip is to go to bear world in rexburg idaho like if you're driving that way you gotta go check out bear world especially if you have kids you get to drive through you see bears cubs all sorts of all sorts of things wolves bison there's a little petting zoo and there's even a little amusement park and free fudge so i strongly endorse bear world you might think that well i'm going to see bears and yellowstone there's no guarantee that you see bears in yellowstone they can actually be kind of hard to find sometimes so going to bear world in rexburg idaho it's an amazing experience plus we might have uh oh we're going to talk about later but the grizzly wolf and discovery center was hillstone um now from the northwest like when coming from idaho montana which seriously we lived in montana for a summer it is god's country so beautiful there but there's no national parks on the way but oh my goodness just beauty all around you so you're gonna have a great time even getting to yellowstone your your trip is gonna be awesome before you get there one other thing i want to bring up is you don't go to yellowstone without hitting grand teton um if it's your first time if you're coming all the way out here from back east or somewhere really far away grand teton is only an hour and a half away from the south entrance of yellowstone and the mountains are gorgeous it's like everywhere you look incredible mountains just i mean it is like what you picture of like the national parks beautiful mountains west like yellowstone is unique because of the geysers and the wildlife and things like that but grand teton is like nature at its best it is really cool and and we have that covered so if you want to visit grand teton we have a whole other video just like this on grand teton but give yourself a couple extra days to do that park and you'll be glad you did oh and people also will see glacier on this trip too glacier national park um another man i just love them all it's too hard to say which one's the best but but i hate the idea of you missing any of those so if you can go to all three of them quite common to hit these three as a big vacation at west for people glacier is a lot farther away though well four or five hours away from from yellowstone something like that but you also in teton right next to each other um we'll have guides for all three of those if you want to visit those soon okay so next topic is getting around yellowstone this is a very common question that we get on our channel is people have questions about getting around yellowstone because it's such a big park so it's the size of delaware and rhode island combined which gives you some feel for how big our states are out west it just takes up a corner of wyoming and it's still massive one of our largest national parks in the lower 48 for sure okay so you have to have a vehicle to get around obviously there are no shuttles in yellowstone you might have heard this year they are piloting a brand new shuttle like a driverless shuttle but it's only for just a tiny section of the park if you're staying in canyon village it's just to get around canyon village and restaurants it's nothing that you can get around the park in at all you need a car to see yellowstone for sure and with that i wanted to just bring up that as you're planning a trip and as we shoot these videos we do our very best to have the most up-to-date information but things are always changing and so we've created a website that we can really update easily and so i encourage you to go to whereintherockies.com if you're planning a trip immediately just to see what the current conditions are we also highly recommend going to the national parks website because that is the most current information we've we've created this because we feel like sometimes it's a little hard to to get a comprehensive view of everything you need to know about about visiting a national park on the national parks website but they will let you know which things are open which things are closed when to reserve tickets for things all that stuff that's where you're gonna find the most current information okay so the park is laid out in what's called the grand loop road the grand loop road is a huge oval that goes around the park we do not recommend ever driving around the grand loop road in one day it's massive takes four to seven hours depending on traffic jams and things like that there's a connecting road in the middle of the grand loop road so we really just refer to it as the upper loop and the lower loop the grand loop road by the way is located you know in the middle of the park it takes a while just to get from the park entrances those five park entrances to the grand loop so you'll do a lot of driving in yellowstone to drive around one of the loops takes two to two and a half hours that's if you're just driving you might run into buffalo jams we call them where you're just parked there and buffalo are standing in the middle of the road blocking your way you might run into other jams called bear jams this is bear jams come from from the old days when people would literally stop and feed the bears this was okay up and up all the way through the 1960s you could just stop and feed the bears from your car so they call them bear jams today bear jams are more like people who stop to see a bear and if you see i mean this happens all the time they'll just be driving down the road and suddenly traffic jam because everybody's looking at the wildlife that they saw off to the side so without jams two to two and a half hours to drive around the park the recommendation here is that you can count on approximately 30 minutes from point to major point as i'm showing you here on the map there are like five major points on the lower loop four major points on the upper loop now it might only take you you know 10 or 15 but it might take a little longer the speed limit is 45 miles per hour and we really encourage you to not speed because even though at times you might be able to go faster than the 45 there are wildlife that could come jutting out in front of you at any moment it is actually the you know one of the major ways that wildlife died in yellowstone because you can't hunt yellowstone but there's still plenty of human cause deaths in yellowstone because people are speeding yes and then one other thing to think about is that yellowstone is visited by very many international international visitors so there are a lot of people there that aren't used to american traffic laws and so you know just be cautious be careful and and help everyone out by being a safe driver okay one last thing on the driving time is that i mentioned that the grand loop road is located in the middle the grand loop road by the way called the grand loop because in the early days when visitors visited before the automobile they would get to gardner and a horse and carriage company would take them around the park in a loop and it would take them about a week they would go stopping at a different hotel every night to see the park really quite an amazing way to see the park i think and that was it's so big that's the only way they could do it is just to go from one place to another for like a whole week seeing each side as you go so they're called the grand loop so the last thing there is that since it's located in the middle uh it really would save you a lot of driving time if you stay in the park um there are many places to stay in the park we'll talk about those later okay so what to see and do all right we might want to alternate these because there's a lot yeah there is okay so probably one of the most awe-inspiring ones is the grand canyon of the yellowstone it is completely gorgeous waterfalls yellow rock canyon you can see it from lots of different vantage points but we prefer artist point that's our favorite place to look at it um so that's that's definitely you must go to it every time you go we always go to grand canyon of yellowstone even though we've seen it 30 times it's fine i love it it is quite a magical place we've had many people on our channel say they just couldn't get the grand canyon yellowstone out of their mind in fact the reason why it's called artist point is because one of the early visitors to the park also couldn't get out of his mind and painted a huge 7x12 canvas painting of the grand canyon of the yellowstone very famous image that actually helped it to become a national park so this is really an iconic site this is this is the number one thing in yellowstone and i know matt wants to talk more about this but he made a whole other video about it just check that out if you want to hear more about it because it's a pretty good video number two is old faithful old faithful the most you know iconic image of yellowstone probably you know you're familiar with the tower of water with the plume at the top old faithful is uh i know that there are people out there that are like oh old faithful is just a kind of a touristy thing i i i disagree i think gold faithful is great you gather there's a ton of people that gather around there's a huge sitting or like sitting area and boardwalk around old faithful we go there every time and and it's great it puts on a great show it's one of the best geysers in the park and it's guaranteed you will see a geyser erupt if you go to old faithful geyser basin in fact if you buy our guide matt tells you how you could probably hit two or three of them and see them erupt because there's more than just old faithful at the old faithful geyser basin that erupts regularly so yeah you can get the guide or watch our video on i think we have videos on this too so either way just know that like set your standards a little higher you can see more than when guys are erupt oh grand prismatic spring this is just beautiful it's i just don't even know how to put it into words we're gonna put a picture up there so you can see it used to be called emerald lake just to give you an idea this is a hot spring but it's massive it's bigger bigger than a football field and you're gonna see just cascades of colors like rusty orient and turquoise blue just some incredible colors and you can see deep down into that grand prismatic and something really special about ground prismatic as well is you can see it on the boardwalk like at eye level and close up but you can also go on a little hike and see it from up high and that that's what you you have to go do that like you haven't seen ground prismatic unless you've kind of climbed up and seen it from up higher the next thing on our list here is viewing wildlife most people really pro that i have heard of probably are coming to yellowstone mainly to view the wildlife and it is one of the best places in the lower 48 states to view wildlife there are two main valleys in the park that is lamar valley and hayden valley to view wildlife there are tons of bison roaming the bison roam all over the place you're guaranteed to see bison that is for sure and they are so cool yeah it's like when you go to florida you're going to see an alligator even if you're on the freeway if you go to yellowstone you're going to see a bison you don't need to look for them they're going to be around yeah lamar and hayden is where you might also see grizzly bears black bears most of the wolves hang out in lamar valley or in the northern part of the park so beautiful just beautiful places to drive through great places about wildlife yes and lamar is going to be out of your way but hayden isn't you are going to be driving through hayden valley when you're driving around hayden's right on the lower loop lamar a little bit out of the way we'll talk about that a little bit later too okay next is mammoth hot springs that's on the upper loop at the top of it kind of by gardener if you're staying in that area and mammoth hot springs mammoth house springs is a city okay it's where the park headquarters is yes actually there's a lot going on man but the main feature there is mammoth hot springs which has these tavern teen terraces travertine terrace yes travertine paris and their their glory days are kind of behind them yellowstone's always kind of moving a little bit so it doesn't have the active water that's drizzling down but it's like it's like an inside out cave like you're in a cave without the darkness and the cold dampness like it's cool but but there's not as much geyser activity there anymore but you don't see land features like that everywhere like it's very rare to see nowhere besides like that like they're they're neat and so if you're going there for the first time or only time you got to see that because you won't see it anywhere else mammoth also has fort yellowstone which is where the army was stationed in the early days so when the park was created there was no national park service at the time and there were still people coming in poaching animals and uh ruining some of the geyser formations and stuff just causing problems yes so they stationed the army to oversee this massive park so fort yellowstone is there also roosevelt arches near mammoth hot springs and boiling river is near there which is a great place to get in the water that we'll talk about later okay can i talk about yellowstone lake yeah okay so the next one is yellowstone lake this place is so big like as far as the eye can see it's i think elson lake is either 300 or 400 feet deep super deep super cold okay this is not a place that you go swimming in it averages about 41 to 42 degrees in the summer so it's not a warm lake but many people enjoy fishing in it there's a lot of rules about fishing in yellowstone and so you'll definitely want to check out the park website if you're a fisherman and people enjoy fly fishing yellowstone as well like there's great fishing there people enjoy it and it's so picturesque when you see people out fly fishing in the rivers but yellowstone lake is just cool to see um and and like if you go down to west thumb geyser basin you can actually see some geysers that are in the lake it's really neat so um yeah yellowstone lake is cool just don't plan on swimming in it okay the next thing is geyser basins and waterfalls we'll just kind of lump these together so there's like 11 geyser basins in the park the big ones are upper geyser basin which is where old faithful is midway geyser basin which is where grand prismatic spring is and then lower geyser basin which has a famous geyser named great fountain geyser that's a really beautiful erupting geyser and then maybe the next popular one is norris geyser basin and west thumb guys are basically maybe those two kind of tied together anyway there's just so many geyser basins uh some people say they get quite tired you know once you've seen one you've seen them all so which is why our guide we we try to have kind of a game plan for actually seeing geysers rocked because if you if you see them erupt it actually changes the experience a bit it's just more enjoyable when you see geysers erupt at yellowstone well and can we talk about the four types of geysers sure okay so that's that's something else you need to know there's four types of geysers there's cone geysers right like well there's geysers that shoot yes like old faithful that's like what most people picture geyser right so guys that shoots has they have cone geysers which kind of like old faithful they just shoot out the ground great fountain geyser is called a fountain geyser which shoots out of a lake of water essentially yeah then there's there's the springs hot springs hot springs like grand prismatic spring so they look like they're so big they look like lakes they're just big and they're filled with pretty water well and some of them are really small and gorgeous deep blue colors that you look way deep down into the thing and then there's these mud pots that it's just like this bubbling mud and it's stinky that's something else you need to know about yellowstone it's not a place of sweet smells it's a stinky place and then the last one are funerals so it's just it's just hot gas coming out of the ground but um it's steamed yeah steam event so you can find all four they're real easy to find but but the different geyser basins kind of have different varieties of those things and like matt said there are some geyser basins that are better than others like especially if you're only going to be there one time you'll definitely want to hit the best ones yeah and then like just two times ago when we visited we went there early in the morning and the the whole land was just steaming up right it was just a big cloud it's the most amazing site it's incredible okay waterfalls you mentioned waterfalls there's a lot of waterfalls there are like 300 waterfalls in yellowstone but there are quite a few that are just right on the loop the upper and the lower loop that you can just pull over and they're amazing yeah we call them the b list falls because they're there's the famous falls that there's tower and upper falls and lower falls which lower falls i just love love love love but but these b list falls are actually they're incredible like i would hike five miles to see one of those but in yellowstone you don't have to do that you just pull around the side of the road and you literally have to just walk a few feet from your car to go see it and i just wanted to throw something in here too that yellowstone is incredibly um friendly to people who are disabled like if walking's hard if you're in a wheelchair there are boardwalks everywhere there's it's very very accessible so if mobility is a challenge for you or someone that you're traveling with they're not you're gonna have a good trip to yellowstone there's just great accessibility to see many many of the things in the park okay a couple of other activities that you can do at yellowstone is you can swim there are two places you can swim which is a fire hole river which we don't recommend i haven't been in it but cheryl says the current's kind of strong and it could be a little dangerous so she says no on fire hole river and i want to also point out the name's a little deceiving fire ho you're picturing like hot tub no no no some geyser water goes into that river making it tolerable to swim in yeah so yeah the hot spring water mixes in with the all the rivers of course are freezing cold but that but the yeah the hot spring yeah it makes it a little taller yeah so i mean if you're going to do fire hall river which is fine if you want to go do that bring a life jacket bring some aqua socks because it's rocky and and you'll you'll be all right keep an eye on those little kids and then pay attention to the current of the river make sure it's not too fast but our favorite place to go is go ahead oh boiling river we like the boiling average again river because the the hot spring water is emptying into the gardner river and actually that hot spring water is really hot and you can sit right next to it where it is boiling honestly but then it mixes in with the the cold gardener river and it is an amazing experience because you get these hot currents and these cold currents and so there's a little sitting spot there that people have kind of put some rocks around and very popular spot that's the thing the secret's kind of getting out on the boiling river it's near mammoth so it's up upper loop you're gonna have to hike about a mile to get to it but it's flat easy i would recommend though this is some ninja tips for you staying here and watching this long video is change your clothes before you go there's two bathrooms there and it's pretty popular you could end up waiting to change your clothes for a long time so make some other arrangements to get into your bathing suit and change your clothes wear your tennis shoes out there bring your water shoes because you're going to step in among the rocks and it is pretty rocky so and then of course bring your towel okay those are the big tips yeah but you'll enjoy it that's that's a really nice break because here's the thing about yellowstone those geyser basins are cool and looking at the wildlife is cool but it's kind of just nice to get in the water and relax it it adds some variety to your trip so we recommend doing that stop for sure um we didn't bring up fishing neither of us are i talked about it a little bit yeah you did that's another activity that you can do not just at yellowstone lake but they're yellowstone's quite famous for for fishing i'm just like fly fishing and oh and you can bike in yellowstone um one of the one of our best places we think to bike is at the old faithful geyser basin the old people guys are basin has miles of boardwalks but one of the coolest things is a morning glory spring at the end of it and there's a geyser that shoots off into the river you can take a bike path from the parking lot at old faithful clear over to that it's about a mile long and you can ride a bike you can even rent them at the old people snow lodge right there and go ride a bike and that'll save you some time if you don't want to walk that far we're not real apple avid bicyclists but we did take our bikes to yellowstone last time we went and it was pretty cool to ride our bikes and we also wrote a little trail kind of in the back and grand prismatic there's a trail i wouldn't call yellowstone a bikers park um except in the spring they open up to bikers only that they can just ride in on the roads with no cars that that would be that'd be pretty cool but other than that i wouldn't count on biking around the grand loop road it's kind of dangerous the shoulders are narrow i i would not do that there are some biking paths there but nothing that are like real long like at grand teton maybe they have real long biking paths oh yeah um i wouldn't say yellowstone's a bikers park but we liked bringing our bikes and it saved us some time getting around some places and it was kind of nice to be impressed this whole because you're just out in nature and kind of a nice way to experience it all right ooh safety this is your thing i love talking about safety okay lots of people are scared to go to yellowstone they're worried about being a super volcano they're worried about bears okay um okay that's true but if they're they're legit things so let me ease your fears okay number one yellowstone's not gonna blow up while you're there hey we we just did a video on the super volcano we're pretty confident it's not gonna blow up on you so you're gonna be okay that way the other thing let's talk about fairs for a minute bears first of all there's not tons of bears there and they generally stay away from where people are um we've done i mean we've done everything when you go to y'all we've stayed in a hotel we've brought our trailer we've even slept in a tent we've done all of it and i felt safe um the only time i would really worry about theirs is hiking in the back country if you're just hitting the normal tourist sites the geysers you know hayden valley going around that way you could encounter and see a bear but it would most likely be on the side of the road there will be lots of people there and the rangers are always right there on that situation what i do want to caution you about are bison okay bison it's really easy to look at a bison and think it's a giant lazy cow because they're always laying on the side of the road or they get dangerously close to your car when they decide to cross the road and you're just sitting there waiting for them to cross but no animal injures more people in yellowstone than bison do and so be respectful the the rules for the park is 25 yards away from from bison and elk and then 100 yards away from a bear bears and wolves yeah bears and wolves so i mean those rules are there for a reason to protect people and to protect the animals animals that get real comfortable with humans they a lot of times have to euthanize them so you want to make sure that that you're preserving these animals too like you're helping protect those animals by keeping your distance not just yourself but you're protecting those animals too and they do have some pretty strict rules about that human contact with animals they don't want your food out anywhere so if you're camping make sure to put all your food away in your car lock it up don't leave your tablecloth out don't leave your water bottles out those are those yellowstone rangers do not mess around they will give you a ticket if you leave those things out um also i wanted to talk to you about bear spray okay if you do choose to do some back country hiking in yellowstone be smart and bring bear spray with you in fact one of my co-workers her and her husband they were out doing some back country fishing and they were attacked by a bison like it had been like a docile bison that was just hanging out they weren't getting approaching it or anything but it got riled up and it charged them and here's a special tip for you bear spray works on any animal and i did a whole video on bear sprays and which is the best one you can watch it but we were after testing all those bear sprays i seriously considered that i might rather be mauled by a bear than get sprayed by bear spray that stuff is wicked powerful so you want to be safe know how to use it but just just be aware of how dangerous any of the wildlife can be and that but also the bear spray will work on any animal and then lastly about driving 45 miles an hour just keep the speed limit keeps you others and animals safe okay next up is where to stay at yellowstone so behind me you see the famous old faithful inn this is amazing building so this is one of nine lodges or hotels that you can stay at inside the park at yellowstone they also have some places like some cabins that you can stay in so there are quite a few options so we just kind of want to give you an overview of some of the things that you need to know about staying in the park first of all you can book places in the park up to 13 months in advance about a year in advance they open up for reservations and they do fill up fairly quickly especially the old faithful inn yes now i was able to book at the old faithful in this year like earlier this year i was able to get a spot for june at the very beginning of june when it's not quite as visited but then they canceled their reservation thanks to corona but anyway so staying in the park will save you driving time that's one of the big huge advantages of it but one thing to know you know you can see this is a pretty old building this was built in 1903 a lot of people say it's the largest log building in the world it really is a marvel to go in and look at but these places are not known for their amenities no um they're kind of they don't have air conditioning now you really don't need it because the temperatures really don't get that hot at yellowstone 80 degrees at the most or on average but then they don't have what televisions most of them most of the rooms you can get a tv if you stay up in mammoth but that's it um yeah then you're sharing bathrooms with other people yes yes so i mean they're they're they're making you rough it a little bit so just plan on that the newest and the largest is canyon village the canyon hotel that is the last one to fill up anyway that's that's the biggest one okay if you stay outside of the park we would recommend west yellowstone or gardner okay because those two are closest to the park now remember just to drive from the park entrance to the grand loop road takes 20 minutes plus okay and so well the other thing is the you can get in the lineup getting into the park yes like if you aren't up and at them early in the morning you can be in a pretty big line just to enter yellowstone park but if you're staying in the park you bypass all that and and like matt saying mostly entrances there is a decent drive getting from wherever you're staying outside of the park just even to get to the park and then to the road so yes yes so west yellowstone it literally sits right next to the entrance it's just you hop in it's really great and gardner is the same way gardner's the same way yeah so those are easily the two best spots now some people will think that cody wyoming is a jumping off spot for yellowstone they kind of advertise themselves as a jumping-off spot it is not a place to stay in our opinion um like if it was your only option i guess you should do it but the thing is it takes like two hours to get from cody to i think old faithful on the lower loop i mean it takes you an hour and a half at least just to get to the loop from coding then you gotta drive around the loop and then you gotta go back it's it's a long ways um the other place that we might recommend though is up in the north east corner on that northeast entrance there's a city called cook city slash silvergate and it's a tiny little town but that would be a good spot to maybe spend a night if you were going to hit lamar valley on the way in or out or something like that because lamar is kind of hard to get to from gardner it takes like an hour and a half to get out all the way to the end of lamar or something like that so you're doing quite a bit of driving it's real far from the west gate and from west yellowstone it's almost impossible to go lamarr back i mean you can do it but you're skipping over everything else so yeah cook city would be a good option to stay a night or something like that that's what we're going to do this year actually we're going to stop it and it's not part of yellowstone trip we're just going mm-hmm yeah we're just going um anyway driving is a major thing it yellowstone that you need to be aware of yellowstone can actually be kind of exhausting because you're driving a lot and again you might get stuck in these traffic jams and so it'll kind of test your patience occasionally so we just encourage you to think of yellowstone as an experience and to just enjoy what it what it brings one time we were driving along the road from norris up to mammoth we stopped for a little picnic spot that's another insider tip by the way tons of picnics box spots around the park and there was a pelican hunting for fish and it was floating down the river and it would fly up to the top of the river and float back down and we sat there and watched that pelican for 30 minutes to an hour or something like that and it was just a marvel to kind of see nature play its course right and so just just encourage you to kind of enjoy it as it comes and take those moments like that and you know no plan is going to be perfect at yellowstone now i did a whole other video on places to stay in yellowstone so if you want to be more comprehensive you can you can watch that but the other thing to know is that there's other places to stay outside of the park um like we talk about west yellowstone there's tons of hotels we love the days and they have a water slide there our kids love that um oh yeah the days in was great yeah and the other thing is just if you really can't and also those hotels right outside like in west yellowstone that's your best bet if you're doing a last minute trip to yellowstone you know you might not be able to secure lodging if you're planning a week in advance inside the park but you can we've done a couple impromptu trips to yellowstone and we've just stayed in west yellowstone at a hotel and it's worked out great so if you're doing your last minute planner maybe do that and also island park is near west yellowstone it's a little further away than you'd probably like but you could still get you can still stay there and they have a lot of vrbos airbnbs if you have a larger group you can find some accommodations there okay our next topic is where to camp so again there's inside the park and there's outside the park so inside the park there are 12 campgrounds the largest of these are in the middle of the park thankfully so like canyon village norris and madison and those really are the ideal spots you want to camp okay let me just give you a quick overview of camping in yellowstone here on the map you can see the red locations are reservable camping spots and the blue ones are first come first serve and this is a change for the 2021 season specifically the top three there mammoth slough creek and pebble creek all moved to a reservation system either fully or partially for 2021 norris and tower are closed now fishing bridge is rv only you have to have a hard side trailer to stay there that is also closed in 2021 they're renovating it right now so limited options for 2021 but if you're going to if you want to camp at yellowstone you want to make sure you get on at the open window times again about six months in advance because they do book up very quickly especially some of the smaller ones up in lamar valley like slough creek and pebble creek those will fill up pretty quick camping yellowstone is fun it really does give you a chance to connect with park in the nature and waking up without mountain air if you can camp i i would recommend camping in yellowstone that's usually the way in fact i'm not sure we stayed in the park other than camping we love camping i believe those open up six months in advance so as opposed to the lodges the hotels which open up a year in advance campgrounds are like six months in advance on those reservations and it's super common for people to i mean it's funny people start looking like december to book their campsite for june right because it's six months away so you know if you're if you're watching this early be thinking about that think six months ahead and reserve that camp spot the first come first serve campgrounds will fill up often times around six o'clock in the morning so people will drive there like in the middle of the night almost and wait in line for the morning for some people to leave so they can get in there that's how popular camping has gotten here i imagine the whole country but certainly here in the rockies it has gone nuts in the recent years so that's a few things which you need to know about camping in the park now outside of the park is run mostly by the forest service so it's a different agency that's that's you know that you can't find all this information in one place that's one thing we're trying to to help you out with here but there are so many campgrounds outside of the park many of them are around hebgen lake um well they're just all over the place they're they're all over the place on all entrances but like we've camped at hebgen lake before beautiful beautiful area with and here's one thing a lot of people have said the campgrounds outside of the park probably nicer than inside the park so those camp sites tend to be a little larger although i haven't noticed it being a problem when we camped inside the park but that's one comment that people have made the costs are really affordable either way i mean they're only usually probably 20 bucks a night or something like that 25 bucks a night they're really affordable oh one thing to know too inside the park they don't accommodate large rvs well so if you're if you're driving your big old rv across country to yellowstone better check on the links on how they measure it okay the other thing is when on inside the park they'll say okay you have like a 40 foot length for camping well that is um you can't double up so you can't like put park your trailer there and then park your truck next to it and say okay but they're 40. when they say 40 feet they're saying the whole thing because most of them are are like one you just have to back into the spot or or maybe a pull through but um not doubled up because am i making sense cheryl yeah okay so you have to look read the rules carefully inside now once you get outside of the park a lot more options a lot more flexibility you're going to be able to find forest service sites and other sites that are going to accommodate your big rv obviously you'll be able to find some glamping sites that's a thing that's a big thing nowadays well i wanted to mention kind of amenities at the campsites in the park they do have flush toilets they have running water and then almost all the campsites are close to the big general stores where you could pay to go take a shower buy groceries things like that and they have they have like they have dump stations at the major campgrounds so you'd have access to those things one campsite in the campground is fishing bridge rv park it's only rvs you have to have a hard side trailer and that's because that is real bear country there a lot of grizzly bears are in that area and they have they've made that uh hard sided only okay this is your thing okay where to eat i'm gonna just be honest with you if you're a foodie yellowstone is not where you're going to um have great new eating experiences okay yellowstone's not known for its cuisine i'm just saying it's known for its scenery and stuff like that but there are 20 restaurants within the park so you won't go hungry they have and they have a variety they have counter service they've got their general stores where you can buy all sorts of grocery and quick grab things and they do have a few fine dining ones you can eat at the old faithful inn you can eat at lake village there's some very fancy places i've i wrote a whole article about it on our website you can check it out on food if you want to but um but you're never far away from food so just know that now of course we're filming this during the coveted pandemic so at this time a lot of things are grab and go but but things are starting to improve and so we're hoping by the time you watch this video that there will be more accessibility to a variety of foods um one of the things that i have to give a big plug for is get an ice cream cone an old faithful their ice cream is supplied by big dipper creamery which is in montana and it's delicious when we lived there in montana for the summer we'd see people lined up outside this ice cream shop and we're like what's all the fuss about then we waited in line for 30 minutes and got our ice cream cone and thought worth it we loved it so you'll definitely want to try the ice cream in there get one while you're watching old faithful going up a tower just get an ice cream cone and then roosevelt old west cookout this is also on the northern northern end of yellowstone but this is this is something we're going to do this year is go eat the roosevelt old west cookout so there's two ways you can do this you can eat at roosevelt lodge um kind of a fine dining steakhouse type of a thing or you can ride a horse or take a horse carriage ride out into the hills and they feed you um kind of a cowboy dinner check wagon chuck wagon dinner um so i'm really excited for this i haven't done it yet so i can't tell you exactly how how good it is but but we're excited to go that's that i would say is the unique that is the one unique dining experience in yellowstone wouldn't you say yes and like the nice thing about yellowstone too is that you can go there many many times and there's always something new for you to do like we've been there many many times but we've never done this cookout and we're constantly finding new things to do there and if you want to do a return trip you'll find new things to do too if this video was helpful to you we would really appreciate a like so you can spread this to other people and if you are interested in trips to the west subscribe we are always posting new videos about new locations we're going and about how to go to them and we also have some really great stories about the places so check those out too okay next up is when to visit yellowstone this is another wow really common question that we get on our channel so let me just try to blow it down simply for you here um the travel the main travel season for yellowstone is may to october it is open for about three to four months in the winter that would be just for like snowmobile traffic and snow coach how the roads are actually snowed over but the main travel season for yellowstone made october and really june july and august by far the main three months obviously those are the summer months when kids are out of school but they're also the most amazing weather months for yellowstone the average high is 80 degrees gorgeous weather during the summer this is not one of those you go during the summer and it's boiling hot and that's the only time you could go it's a beautiful time but those months are the most crowded june july and august by far the most crowded well and i wanted to just put this idea just down i think a lot of times it starts warming up in the rest of the country in march and april but yellowstone is virtually closed during those months because in the winter they plow the roads up in the northern end um so that people can go do their snowmobile excursions but march and april are kind of it's still snowy but not snowy enough to do that stuff so it's just a big mucky mess and the park's pretty much closed so march and april are a no-go no spring break at yellowstone yeah may and october are the two high-risk high-reward months they're the two gamble months okay so they could be beautiful and very few tourists during those months but you could also get a major snowstorm and if you're visiting in october you might get a snowstorm that closes the park for the rest of the year because the park actually does close usually mid to late october for good until december at least okay so then um those two months i've heard people just rave about those months but also i've heard people my friend went there in october and first day they were there big snowstorm park closed for the rest of the season so they were done for their trip it was crazy so our favorite time is september okay it's really nice weather it's gonna still get cold at night like 30s at night 70s during the day maybe okay and then um the crowds there's still a fair amount of crowds but it's dying off from the big high summer craft yep okay and the other special thing about september is the elk get in the rut means the bull starts showing off for the ladies and they if you go up to mammoth you're going to see a show they they do like they'll kind of ram cars with their antlers they're they do some crazy stuff so it's kind of fun if you're not involved in getting around okay all right let's talk about weather okay we're in the rockies it is you're gonna have some extreme weather um in the morning it's pretty cold if you're going there like during the season matt talked about that may through september it's going to be 40 degrees in the morning you're going to be pretty cold you're going to want to coat gloves hat and then by 11 o'clock it's going to be warm and those boardwalks especially get warm and so you're going to want to be in a t-shirt and short so just be prepared for a 40 degree swing in the weather yeah it can snow and storm at any time i mean even in the middle of july you can get in a pretty cold windy rainstorm so dress in layers bring some good water protection like whether it's a poncho or a windbreaker just make sure you have something that's a little waterproof pretty much all in the weather just in layers be prepared for those big swings ooh another burning question another burning question that we always get how many days to visit the park oh such a hard question our standard answer is three days in grand teton four days in yellowstone um but you could spend a week in yellowstone and love it which would also allow you to spend a little more time getting off the beaten path so that is the one thing about yellowstone 90 of the visitors are going to hug those lower and upper loops and really the sites are located right on those loops it's not like you need to park and then hike in a mile off of a loop they're just right there on the loops with the parking lots right there so if you want to avoid the crowds a little bit just get off the loop a little bit that's all you need to do and having more days in the park would give you a little bit more time to do that the thing is there's a reason why people hug the loop and that's because all these amazing sites are right there on the loops so if you're going to be four days you could do essentially uh two days on each loop and see a pretty good amount of amazing things and we say four days because we have created this incredible itinerary where you can see the biggest site in four days um i think a lot of times we're stressed because we don't have enough time to to come to yellowstone and take two weeks to see the whole thing but but after all of our trips to yellowstone and our studying and our experiences we found a really efficient way to view the park where you're going to get to see all the big sites plus a lot of like our b-list waterfalls things like that it's just all about being efficient and having a plan and we've created a really good one that you can check out on our are we're in the rockies in our store so we encourage you to do that if you're efficient you can see a lot of things in 40s yeah efficiency and then you know having a plan and you know the the way we designed our itinerary was to be flexible enough to manage multiple days so like if you're there only two days you can still see a lot of amazing things in in two days um i think it'd be kind of frustrating to just do one day yellowstone yes but seriously our itinerary though i mean it has maps it tells you how long you're going to be at the places for i mean it's just download print and go it's it takes the thinking and planning out of it because i know that when we plan our trips we spend days planning our trips because we want to make sure everything is just perfect and the last thing you want is to go and miss out on something especially if it's due to just lack of knowing the sights there or knowing how to hit it like some of these parking lots fill up early in the day and so we in our itinerary we give you a good order to go do those things so that you can get to those spots and see those things at the right time and be able to see all the things that you need to see okay let's talk about what to pack for yellowstone so we're just talking about things that are pretty specific to yellowstone obviously you're going to be packing what you need to pack to on a cross-country trip if that's what you're doing but specific to yellowstone let's go over a couple of things first of all a lot again a lot of you are coming here to see the wildlife i'm sure now you can see them from the road that's one of the things that makes yellowstone so amazing but they are going to be off a ways okay you're not usually going to be right next to them like if you're looking at hayden valley lamar valley the valley is fairly big so you're going to be seeing them over on the other side of the valley you really want to bring some binoculars or a scope to look at to look at the animals and so we have put a link in the description we have a whole packing guide in the description but we put a link to the ones that we believe are like the best value binoculars in scope in fact the last time we went there um cheryl's dad bought brought his binoculars that he had bought these vortex binoculars and they were really like it is a game changer i'm telling you you could be looking at this bison we were sitting there looking at this bison herd across the river and then i said let me try those binoculars you know and i looked in there i was like whoa i mean it was just right up close it's a whole new ballgame it really is and they come with a nice case that protect them and it's not gonna break the bank like people can spend hundreds of dollars on their binoculars and so these are kind of moderately priced ones that it really is the difference between sitting on the on the upper row at the at the ball game versus right down on the front row it's a big difference so we've got a link to that and the spotting scopes can be a little bit stronger too and you set those up on a tripod those can be nice because you know you're not bouncing around a little bit so you can set it up on a tripod and look in there and even on some of those spotting scopes you can hook your phone to it to take pictures which is kind of my next thing is if you're coming all the way out here to see wildlife and you want some pictures to remember your trip uh if if you'll be taking photos i would recommend getting a nicer camera that has a larger zoom lens on it now i am not a major photographer i'm not like a professional photographer but i bought a nicer camera a couple years ago because i kept going to all these national parks and seeing these amazing sights and i was i had this regret that i wasn't getting really good photos of these places i was just getting my cell phone pictures cell phones are nice but i'm telling you if you see an animal on the other side of the river or something like that that is not going to show up on your phone you can't zoom in on those phones it's terrible so if you really want uh photos i would encourage you to buy a nicer camera we've got some links it's just like the nicer beginner cameras um i'm not going to go into the whole thing right now on it but some we've got some of the information that you need to know in the description and and i'm just talking about i'm not talking about going through a whole course on learning photography just you know point and shoot pretty much but they're nicer in their zoom lens okay so i bring those up because it's just such a big thing for people to see wildlife at yellowstone other things okay don't buy hiking shoes bring some bring a good pair of running shoes or cross trainers i think when you think about going to a national park you think you're going to be hiking around you need like these rugged shoes but the truth is is yellowstone is mostly boardwalks and groomed paths and you're doing a lot of driving and hiking boots are uncomfortable to sit in and so i mean unless you're planning on really doing some hardcore hiking take a good pair of running shoes that's always what i bring i have never ever regretted it you'll be a lot more comfortable your feet will love you at the end of the day okay we mentioned bear spray you only need to be bring bear spray if you're doing one of these off the beaten path hikes and if you're flying in you'll probably buy your bear spray from the store or rent it at the park because it's not allowed on an airplane yeah you can't take it on youtube and we'll give you a spoiler alert after we tested all the bear sprays we recommend frontiersmen it sprays the furthest and longest so like you want to see a sprayer so it's good okay and then we mentioned just dress in layers so you're going to want to bring clothes for that buy some bug repellent you guys yellowstone is full of mosquitoes it can mosquitoes can really ruin a fun moment so bring some good bugger talent i haven't noticed that much around the the geyser basins though no but they're gonna do it if you're camping at night or yeah if you're camping there if you're gonna do a hike that's really probably any hike but mystic falls and the fairy falls hikes are notorious for the bugs um so so if you're gonna do a hike if you're planning on some hiking maybe bring it oh and then and then snacks okay here's the other thing we didn't really quite cover this with the dining but we actually our best recommendation is pack a picnic lunch yeah like you don't want to be indoors in yellowstone pack a picnic lunch and sit outside and enjoy the scenery and you can buy all that stuff at the stores yes and there are tons of picnic spots it's really a nice place to picnic and and another reason is because again you're driving these long distances you don't really know when you're going to be able to get to the next spot i mean it's not like you're going to be in dire straits running like that but you might want to stop and just watch an animal to see what it does i mean we saw a bear feeding on on a carcass one time and so you might just want to stop and enjoy the show so bring some food with you so that you can eat it in your car or you can eat it at a stop roadside or something like that so you're not just relying on having to get to the next place for for a meal and just one other thing to know about yellowstone since it is so big generally when you leave you're gone for the day you're not you don't go for somewhere for a couple hours and head back to your hotel like bring some food so that you can go see the things you want to see that's an all-day deal another example is uh let's say you're at like the great fountain geyser you know that that's gonna erupt in the next half hour something like that you really i would recommend staying there and waiting for that thing to erupt it's going to be worth it and if you have your food then you're not concerned about the meal time and water of course always bring lots of water they have fill up stations at all these big stops but you know bring bring a water bottle this is something the national park changes its stance on fairly often sometimes they're willing to sell you a disposable water bottle and other times they aren't so bring a good water bottle fill it up when you can and you'll be good okay so the next topic is what to do nearby the park now we think that most people who go to yellowstone probably spend just about all their time inside of yellowstone because it's so big and there's so much to see and do but let's say you're going to be there four five six days you might have a little bit of time to do some things outside of the park give you some nice variety to your vacation so in west yellowstone there are the grizzly there's the grizzly wolf and discovery center highly recommend that it is awesome you get to see these grizzlies and wolves up close and they're pretty active otters even and they're it's open 365 days a year so any day you're there it's open there's a rodeo in west yellowstone you can go horseback riding the playhouse is a is a really popular attraction right uh-huh and one thing that people really love is big gun fun where you can shoot some really big goods because we're in the west yep yep shoot some guns they'll supervise you and make sure you're safe mm-hmm they have zip lines so and river crafting so it's just if you're like doing a big family vacation i would highly encourage you to do some of these other activities to break up the driving and the sightseeing for the kids for sure so last time we were there that's what we did we did a river rafting horseback ride rodeo i mean great great things to do if you're up in gardiner there are the hot spring mammoth hot springs is there but then gardner has that actual hot springs you can pay to go enter in and sit in the hot springs yeah you don't sit in the hot springs in the park but you can go no but gardner has a hot springs there and then up the road from gardner is chico hot springs which is a little resort town that's that's quite famous uh really popular place to go and there's also river rafting up there so you can river raft and oh the biggest the best place to river raft is in the grand tetons down by the snake river if you're gonna include teton on your trip and you want some adventure some rapids yeah go go wrap the snake river just go with the go with the company they'll keep you safe um like down south in yellowstone there's lewis lake you can do some kayaking and some boating um gosh there's just so much to do to to vary up your to give your trip some variety okay and then out what or sorry out east is cody wyoming now i mentioned that it's maybe not a jump off town for to stay there and visit yellowstone but if you're coming from the east that is certainly a town you want to go to on your way to and from yellowstone very famous western town really kind of comparable with jackson wyoming which is just south of teton these two towns are just have that western feel to them we're going to take a trip to cody here this year um and we'll do a lot more on cody but you got to visit cody they've got a huge museum there they just have so much to do their wild horses rodeo i mean cody's got a lot there so we're almost there okay so just general tips things you need to know when you go to yellowstone first is a cell connection not great no cell connection yeah virtually none you can't count on it no no no like if you're staying outside the park you get the information you need before you enter the park off your cell phone and then plan on just roughing it which is important to have the map have a guide you know because you really kind of need to know where you're going there are a couple of apps to download that we would recommend there's the official national park service yellowstone app which has some some cool little audio tours on it another thing is the yellowstone explorer app where people can get on there and say where they've seen wildlife recently so it might kind of give you give you some ideas there so two apps maybe to download all right have a game plan i cannot emphasize this enough like you already know this you're watching your video if you're still watching this then that you're the you're a planner and you're gonna have a great trip but we we do strongly recommend our guide it does save you a lot of time because it is so complete it is so easy to follow it will guarantee that you have a fantastic trip and something to complement our guide is we have an audio tour as well people pay hundreds of dollars to get these personalized tours and you can have that all in your car with our itinerary and our audio guide matt is a history professor and he has spent so much time researching the stories of yellowstone you can learn about the wildfires of yellowstone you can learn about the drama between the wolf packs and just what made yellowstone become a national park all of those things that you will love to listen to as you drive around the park and i actually even love to listen to this audio guide when i'm just driving around because it's so interesting so have a plan and learn a little bit while you're there i think a lot of times history doesn't sound that exciting before your trip but when you get there you want to know everything about it and you will not be disappointed in this audio guide yeah one of the things on our channel so many people ask us questions and it's so fun because they're just so excited to go to yellowstone they've never been there before and so they're they're asking us all these questions on our channel and things like that and i i just you know i'm so to me if you visit a national park without knowing the stories behind it you're you're only getting kind of half of the experience you really there's some amazing stories that are going to help you understand the park so i kind of designed my audio guide a little bit like a yellowstone 101 you know where i can give you some of the the coolest stories i've hand-picked my favorites and and i teach that the way the audio guide's lined up is uh each section is about 10 to 15 minutes long i talk about an aspect of the park or a story like she mentioned the fires of yellowstone or like bear feeding bear feeding used to be allowed in yellowstone and it has a whole interesting story behind it people visitors to the park used to be able to just feed bears from their car and so i'll give you the history behind all of it stories uh information about the geysers dumb dumb yellowstone behavior people that climb into the grand canyon and stick their head in old faithful so this is really where i this is kind of my my passion for this and i love you know just seeing people have a great trip it's really fun so yes we want to tell you thank you for sticking with us and watching us and letting us tell you about a place that we truly love we hope that you're going to get to have an incredible experience at yellowstone we would love to hear in your comments any other questions you have or any of the fantastic experiences you've had at yellowstone thank you for watching

Channel: We're in the Rockies

Views: 162,411

Keywords: Yellowstone National Park, Trip Planner, Itinerary, wildlife, fort yellowstone, where to stay, geyser, weather, Old Faithful

Id: B0v-U9iUgIU

Length: 63min 13sec (3793 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021