Are you visiting Yellowstone this year? As an author who has written about the park, people often ask me for help planning their Yellowstone vacations. It can be a challenge since we’re all so different. Do you prefer camping or luxury hotels? Eating from a cooler or in a restaurant? Hiking or viewpoints? Every visitor to Yellowstone would probably come up with a different list. But with that in mind, here are my top ten tips for planning a trip to Yellowstone National Park.
Visit During the “Shoulder Season.” Yellowstone is crazy busy during the summer months. If you have the option of traveling in late spring or early fall, you’ll have fewer lines, traffic jams, and headaches. If you have to go during the summer, make use of the early morning and late evening hours. The park is less packed at those times.
Download these two apps: NPS and GyPSy. The new NPS app is free from the National Park Service and is a fantastic resource for visiting Yellowstone. Look up the park before you go, and be sure to click “save this park for offline use.” Cell coverage within Yellowstone is sporadic at best. You can click through for hiking suggestions, self-guided tours, lodging and campground information, alerts, and even find out where you can get your park passport stamped! The GyPSy app is like having a tour guide in your pocket. As you drive through the park, it follows along with your phone’s GPS and volunteers information about what you’re seeing and will even suggest great places to stop. You won’t miss a thing with this app to guide you. Thankfully the voice is entertaining rather than annoying.
Stay inside the park. I’m always hearing people recommend hotels that are “minutes from the park boundary.” In most cases, they are much cheaper (and often nicer) than park hotels. BUT––trust me on this––staying INSIDE the park is well worth the extra expense. Imagine walking out your door to see Old Faithful erupt at sunrise or by moonlight. Or glancing out your cabin window and seeing a bull bison stroll by. Yellowstone is huge and it always takes far longer to get from place to place than you think. By staying in the park, you get additional hours of crowd-free time at the best spots. You can’t put a price tag on that. Except, I guess in this case, you can! (Hint: Rooms fill fast, but cancellations are also common. Keep checking back).
Pack your food and bring water bottles. I’m the first to admit that I’m not a foodie, so mediocre quality dining experiences rarely upset me. So when I say Yellowstone’s food is not great, I’m not kidding. We have tried everything from fine dining down to the plastic-wrapped sandwiches in the general stores. It doesn’t seem to matter where we eat, it is just unimpressive (sometimes downright bad), expensive, and slow. I’d encourage you to save your dining dollars on this trip and pack sandwiches and snacks in a cooler. (Note: Be bear-safe when hiking or camping with food. Follow park guidelines.) The one food experience we actually enjoyed while visiting Yellowstone was the ice cream in the Bear Paw Deli at the Old Faithful Inn. They had lots of flavor choices (ex. huckleberry, moose tracks, salted caramel) and big portion sizes for a reasonable price. I’ve heard that the Old West Dinner Cookout at Roosevelt is also good, but we haven’t gone, so I can’t say from personal experience. Since the cookout involves other fun stuff like covered wagon rides and horses, I’d be excited to sign up regardless of the food. It’s on my list for next time.
History buff? Tour the Old Faithful Inn. This free one-hour tour will enthrall history buffs, architectural enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to “peek behind the curtain” of the famous inn. Did you know there’s a treehouse in the rafters? And if you time it right, you might be able to climb up to the crow’s nest on the roof to see the flag raised or lowered.
Bring binoculars or a camera with a good telephoto lens. Yellowstone is a wildlife paradise. I wasn’t five minutes inside the gate when I saw a giant bull moose in the river that paralleled the road. Each trip has been the same. Bison, bears, wolves, elk, it’s nonstop. But you don’t want to get too close. Every year Yellowstone has countless incidents of visitors getting hurt while trying to approach animals for photos. Don’t be that person. (Hiking? Buy or rent bear spray, just in case).
Take the BUS! If you ask either of my kids what they liked best about Yellowstone, they’d both say, “the bus trip.” It seems silly since you can drive around the park on your own, but the bus tours are exceptional. We splurged to ride one of the vintage canvas-topped buses, and the driver was excellent. Anyone who can keep two teenagers entertained and laughing while simultaneously teaching them about geology has my undying devotion. Do this!
See Grand Prismatic. But do it from above. Most visitors make the same mistake I did on my first trip. They stop at the parking lot marked “Grand Prismatic.” This takes you to a lovely boardwalk that circumnavigates the large hot spring. I enjoyed the walk, got some great photos, and got wonderfully damp from the steam. Little did I know, the best view of the hot spring is from a different angle. Park at the Fairy Falls trailhead and walk 1.2 miles to the overlook. My family did this on our second trip and the view was breathtaking. (The mosquitos were also pretty thick, so you might want to bring some bug spray).
Go wildlife watching at dawn/dusk. I love seeing wildlife even more than I enjoy Yellowstone’s hydrothermal features. So I was thrilled to visit both Lamar and Hayden Valleys. Coming from the Pacific Northwest, these wide-open valleys made me want to sing, “Home on the Range” or hum the Bonanza theme. Even though I’d already been treated to countless close-up bison sightings along the road and in the geyser basins, there was something breathtaking about seeing them roaming across the open plain. We also were fortunate enough to see a grizzly, a fox, coyotes, and several herds of pronghorn. If you go during the prime wildlife viewing hours of dawn and dusk, this is one of the best places to catch a glimpse of Yellowstone’s wolves. Watch for pullouts where the experts are setting up their spotting scopes and massive telephoto cameras. They know what they’re doing. (Oddly enough, I spotted wolves over in the Geyser Basin area of the park. So keep your eyes open for surprises while visiting Yellowstone).
Take your time. I’m not sure I can emphasize this enough. Getting around Yellowstone is going to take more time than you expect. So plan . . . loosely. Stay flexible. Allow yourself time to enjoy the surprises, like settling in to observe a bison herd instead of rushing to your next scenic viewpoint. Let the kids enjoy following a ladybug in the picnic area instead of dragging them along to see the next geyser. (Note: Always hold kids’ hands around the hydrothermal features.) Wait around for a geyser eruption that’s NOT Old Faithful. Splash your feet in the freezing waters of Yellowstone Lake (not in a hot spring). Enjoy a cup of coffee while you sit on a bench listening to a ranger talk. Sometimes the best experiences are the ones you don’t plan.
Here’s one last bonus tip––a list of some of my favorite spots: Upper and Lower Geyser Basin, Lamar Valley, Hayden Valley, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls, Grand Prismatic Spring, Norris Geyser Basin, Tower Fall, Travertine Terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs, and so so many more!
Karen Barnett is the author of Ever Faithful: A Vintage National Park Novel, plus several other books set in our parks.