Travel
sarajoy12345
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Yellowstone National Park?
in Travel
DH and I are thinking about taking a trip to Yellowstone this year. I know it's been discussed before, but I have no luck with the search feature. We would be coming from Chicago and are open to driving or flying (if that even makes sense). We probably won't be interested in tent camping but most other types of lodging would be fine.
Any tips, ideas, must-sees, resources, etc? Thank you very much!
Re: Yellowstone National Park?
If you use the overall search bar on the Nest homepage, it'll give you the posts about Yellowstone. This one is about driving from Chicago:
http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/28465859.aspx
My husband and I went to Yellowstone and Grand Teton from Chicago in summer 2010. We contemplated driving but decided to fly so we could use the two days we saved in the parks.
I used a bunch of different websites, plus a guidebook (Moon, I think). Some of the sites still in my bookmarks:
http://www.yellowstoneparknet.com/
http://www.ultimateyellowstonepark.com/
In general, I'd recommend seeing both Yellowstone and Grand Teton. The Tetons are beautiful, and they have some great hikes and tons of animals. In my opinion, must-sees include:
- Grand Geyser (it has a large window, but is worth waiting for)
- Yellowstone Canyon rim (you can hike away from the main lookouts)
- West Thumb Geyser basin
- Mud Volcano area
- Inspiration Point (in Grand Teton)
- Mormon Row in the morning (Grand Teton)
- Snake River overlook made famous by Ansel Adams
I posted these before:
Restaurant Recs
More of a non-rec -- most of the restaurants in Yellowstone park are not great. Low expectations will help. The ones we did like:
- Old Faithful Inn Dining Room
- Roosevelt Lodge Dining Room
In Grand Teton:
- Dornan's Pasta & Pizza (in Moose)
General Tips
- Get off the main road. Take some hikes away from the paved roads and trails. You'll lose the tourists quickly and get to experience the park in a beautiful way.
- Pack warm clothes. It snowed on us in June!
- Talk to the Geyser Gazers. There's a group of people who constantly watch the geysers in the Old Faithful area. They have walkie-talkies and tell each other when certain ones are going to go off. They know so much about the geysers and are happy to share!
- Take a ranger-led hike. Many of them are free, and the rangers can tell you tons of interesting facts.
- One tip from a ranger: There's a social (i.e. unofficial) trail off a pull-out in the road across from Grand Prismatic Spring. It's straight uphill, but gives you a good overhead view of Grand Prismatic.
- In Grand Teton, go to Mormon Row in the morning. The sun hits the barns and it's just beautiful.
- The Grand View trail in Grand Teton is a decently steep uphill climb, but it's pretty short and the view is amazing!
If you go to the Lamar Valley really early in the morning (like just before sunrise), you can hear the wolves howling, and maybe see the packs running around. It's near Roosevelt Lodge, if you stay there.
Also, the "fancy" restaurant at Old Faithful Inn was pretty good (I can't remember the name).
If you're not going to stay in the Park, all of the little towns near the entrances are cute, and we found some charming little cabins to stay at in every one. We went in early June last year and didn't make any reservations. We just drove around, found places that looked cute, and went in.
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
Last year I took a trip with my husband and son (1 1/2 at the time) from Indiana to Yellowstone/Grand Teton. We drove, and we live in northeast Indiana, so our drive was a little further than yours would be. If you enjoy taking road trips, I would drive it, you get to see a lot of beautiful country. We stopped along the way to see the Badlands for a couple days and the Mt. Rushmore/Keystone area as well.
While in Yellowstone we stayed at the Old Faithful Lodge Cabins. They were very basic, but also very inexpensive (less than $70/night). If you want to stay in the park, make your reservations as soon as you can because it books up really fast. We brought our own food that I made ahead of time and reheated while we were there, so no food recommendations.
I second the previous poster that said to get off the main roads. We did a bunch of short hikes (2-3 hours) and we never saw another person hiking!
We just went for a week this past October, it was a wonderful time of year to go, not crowded and the weather was good overall. We saw temps anywhere from the 20s in the morning to up to around 70 on our last day, but overall I would say it averaged about in the 50s. Make sure you take clothes for all different temps, the weather can change in a heartbeat out there.
We stayed at a timeshare in Big Sky, MT, so I can't really help with lodging, but I know there are several places to stay in West Yellowstone, which is right outside the West entrance to the park. It's a quaint little town with cool little shops and restaurants. I'm sure it's probably cheaper than staying in the park, but I can't say that for sure. We flew into Bozeman, MT, btw.
Be prepared to put a lot of miles on your car, whether it be your own or a rental. I think we put over 1000 miles on ours, but we were staying about 50 miles from the park, so those extra miles just getting to and from the park added up over the course of the week. We also went down to see the Grand Tetons, which was about a 3 hour trip one way, if I remember correctly. Just know that the park is absolutely huge, there is no way to see and do everything, so you have to kind of pick and choose what you think is most important.
Since this was our first trip, we kind of wanted to see the "big things" like Old Faithful, Upper and Lower Falls, Mammoth Hot Springs, the Tetons, etc. It honestly was more beautiful than I ever imagined. I don't think I've said "wow" so much on a trip before that.
I got a really good book on Yellowstone that we used as a guide, it was called Yellowstone Treasures: The travelers companion to the National Park. It was excellent, I highly recommend it. It lays out all of the different hot springs/waterfalls/geysers, etc and gives you mile markers for where they are. It also gave some history and tips about safety in the park.