BajaNomad

Insider info for Yellowstone?

BajaLuna - 6-30-2014 at 02:08 PM

We are heading to Yellowstone soon for a 2 week RV road trip with our 2 Grandsons age 9 and 7 (are we crazy? Nah it will be a blast! I have researched places of interest, have a loose itinerary don't want to miss anything but want to stay open too to allow being in the moment. Have reservations already for places we are staying and things like wagon-ride cookout, ranger led hikes (which will be informative for the kids), and a bus tour of the lower loop, as we will drive the upper loop ourselves, we will have lots of time for just meandering about...anyways...

Just wondering since me nor the hubby have been there since we were kids, if anyone has anything they'd like to share on things to be sure to see and do in Yellowstone or points in between!

Here's our plan thus far...

Leaving WA via I-90..spending the night in Wallace Idaho and doing the silver mine tour, spending the next night at Lewis and Clark Caverns and doing the cavern tour, entering into Yellowstone via the North entrance, camping in the north end first...then moving down to the west side and then the south and eastern side a few days later. Stopping along the way to swim in the boiling river, and fire hole canyon river too. Leaving via the west gate and heading to Virginia City Montana ghost town and then hitting Norris hot springs and Missouri headwaters State Park on the way back home.

Our interests..

wildlife, of course
river swimming and hot springs dippin' along the way
day hikes off the beaten path.
educational stuff: Lewis and Clark, Native American, geology, conservation.

any good tips? Any cool places we should stop along the way there and back? Any "must not miss" things in Yellowstone?

thanks in advance on anything you can share!

BajaLuna - 6-30-2014 at 02:16 PM

P.S. I should add...anyone ever drove through Yellowstone in an RV? The park being the first National Park and having been built so long ago the roads are really narrow I hear, of course I'm sure as heck not driving them, but whewww I'm freaking a tad about the drive through there, especially the upper loop.

Skipjack Joe - 6-30-2014 at 02:56 PM

If they can flyfish I can provide some recommendations.

Seeing Old Faithful gush is always a thrill for first timers.

Hook - 6-30-2014 at 03:01 PM

The biggest drawback to an RV is finding parking along the road when the occasional grizzly, moose or bison ambles by. It happens rather often. Whenever you see cars ahead pulled over where there is no REAL parking, you can be sure there is wildlife visible right there.

Other than that, there isn't that much white-knuckler stuff, IMO.

For me, seeing the wildlife is the best thing about Yellowstone. Concentrate on Lamar Valley area; that's where the best viewing is.

I'm not real keen on the Yellowstone NPS campgrounds as the sites tend to be crammed together. But with kids, I guess that is the way to go. But I particularly like the campgrounds and the dispersed camping areas (Lulu Pass Rd.) outside the NE entrance past Cooke City.

chuckie - 6-30-2014 at 03:19 PM

Lots of people, no parking, but still a fabulous place...Suffer in silence, and enjoy every minute of it.....

BFS - 7-1-2014 at 12:00 PM

Mammoth hot springs in the early am is awesome! Kids will love it and you may see some pronghorns drinking in the river. Its waaay up the North entrance though, near Gardiner.

woody with a view - 7-1-2014 at 12:20 PM

just be careful of Yogi and Booboo!

danaeb - 7-1-2014 at 01:04 PM

Take mosquito repellent. They're BIG.

BajaLuna - 7-2-2014 at 08:56 AM

SkipJack....They do love to fish but haven't yet tried to fly fish! We are taking our poles for lake shore fishing!!!

Thanks Hook, that's a relief to know that the drive isn't white knuckle! Yeah, I kind of figured the campgrounds would pack ya in like sardines. Not my idea of camping, but when in Rome! And we won't be in the campground too much seeing how we will be out and about exploring! Lamar Valley is on our list, and hoping to get out there really early in the morning or evening time which I've heard is the best times to view the bears, wolves, bison etc.

Chuckie, I hear ya, it's going to be soooo crowded, peak of the prime tourist season for Yellowstone, UGH. I'd prefer to go in the off-season, but my Grandkids aren't in year-round school.

Woody with a view, hope we do see yogi and boo boo (from afar), but just in case some aren't as nice as them......we got bear spray, we are very familiar with bear spray...don't go out in the evenings here where we live without it, when the bears wake up they love to hang out here and feast on the berries! a little un-nerving when you are out gardening!

Danaeb, thanks just added that to my list, if there's a mosquito in sight it will find me!!

thanks for the input everyone!

Martyman - 7-2-2014 at 09:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by BFS
Mammoth hot springs in the early am is awesome! Kids will love it and you may see some pronghorns drinking in the river. Its waaay up the North entrance though, near Gardiner.


Have to second this idea. There are hot waterfalls that you can duck behind for a sauna! Of course I was on mushrooms at the time.

BajaLuna - 7-2-2014 at 10:02 AM

cool, we will be sure and check out Mammoth too!


so are you saying the waterfalls weren't really hot or perhaps not even there.... it was just the shrooms? LOL!

BajaLuna - 8-13-2014 at 11:47 AM

We are back now from our 2 week RV road trip to Yellowstone with 2 rambunctious Grandsons, ages 9 & 7! It was a great trip but now need a vacation from the vacation, LOL!

I have received a couple of u2u's and emails about reporting back on our trip and helpful hints on traveling with grandchildren so here goes...

Spent our first night in Wallace Idaho and got up the next morning for the first silver mine tour of the day, the kids really liked going into a real silver mine! We left Wallace about noon and drove to Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park in Whitehall Montana and hit the last cavern tour of the day there. This is an awesome cavern, I've been to many in the U.S. but can say this one was one of my favorites! It's a 3/4 mile trek to get to it and uphill the whole way, but totally worth it! Left the next morning and headed to Yellowstone.

I will say that as much as Nana is against kids playing with their electronic games (I don't allow it at my house, they have 5 acres of woods to play in here, eh), it was a god-send for us while driving! Don't leave home without hand-held video games, LOL!! Although they did do a lot of other things to keep themselves entertained while driving IE: following along in their "Kids Atlas" that I bought at Target before we left and that was a great way for them to learn how to follow a map and keep track where we are and how much further! We had the RV loaded up with all kinds of games, puzzles, wildlife learning workbooks, movies etc. and lots of snacks, did I mention "LOTS of snacks", kids eat constantly!

We arrived in Gardiner MT, at an RV park where we spent that night. YS does not have a lot of places for RV camping, and only one takes reservations (in the southeast end of YS), and with all the campgrounds probably being full up we didn't want to take a chance on first come first serve so we just stayed other places where we could make a reservation and be assured a campsite. We arrived in YS via the North gate entrance and we signed them up right away for the "JR. Ranger Program" in Yellowstone, and they both earned their patches by the end of our time in YS! They have to do a workbook, attend a Ranger led talk, and do things like count how many petals on a flower, describe the bark on a tree, learn different animal tracks and scat etc..it was super informative and we all had a lot of fun doing it! After we checked into our camp spot, we drove out to the Roosevelt Lodge area as we had booked the "wagon ride cowboy cookout". I highly recommend this for kids, it was a lot of fun, and the steak dinner was fantastic! They even let the kids drive the horses! They had 600 steaks for 200 people, talk about being in a beef coma afterwards, lol! The food was good! They take all the food out on horse-led wagons, it is quite the production and it is very eco-friendly, with compostable dinnerware, and that makes this eco-girl very happy!! They have it all dialed in and it really was fun. But a word of warning, their cowboy coffee that they float a real horseshoe in to make sure it is like mud by the time they serve it, and cooked over the firepit, will keep you up ALL night. We saw marmots, and also prong horn deer on our wagon trip through Pleasant Valley. Then on our way back to where we were camping that night, a small black bear walked right in front of our RV, 20 ft in front of us, we were sooo stoked, and the kids were able to check off of their YS wish list that they saw a bear in Jellystone! I was a tad disappointed that we didn't see any wolves, which was one of the reasons I wanted to go to YS, to see them in the wild, and they have had many babies born this year and they are mostly in the North end of YS, but we had no such luck.

We then made our way down to West Yellowstone the next morning, stopping along the way at many hot springs. And once we past Mammoth Hot Springs area, we came upon backed up traffic, and sure enough here was a BIG HUGE Grizzly bear chomping on some huckleberries! We are feeling really blessed to have seen a grizzly in the wild, one of the highlights of our trip for sure! We then set up camp at the west entrance KOA right outside of YS, and rented an econo car as we didn't want to drive the RV all over YS, it's not easy to park in all the roadside pullouts in an RV, they get really full up with cars. It worked out perfectly for us to stay at KOA as they had a swimming pool, miniature golf and it was very kid oriented and it was nice to hang out there and for the kids to take a break once in awhile from all the riding in a car and for me to do laundry, sheesh kids can go through a lot of clothes in a short amount of time, eh! We took a tour with the "Buffalo Bus Co." one day, and hit many geyers in the lower loop. Kids got a little bored, 8 hours on a bus and getting in and out, was a little long, but they were troopers! We also had reservations for dinner at The Old Faithful Inn one night, that was really cool, just to be in the old log Inn with so much history is so cool, but the dinner was just so-so.

In the town of West YS we went to the Imax theater one night and saw the movie "Yellowstone", it was great! We also spent a few hours at the "Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center", that was fun and informative too!

We spent most of our time in the Lamar Valley and the west and south end of Yellowstone, hiked a lot and hit a lot of geyers and hot springs but we came to the conclusion that 5 nights in YS is not nearly enough, there is so much to see and do there, I think even if one had 2 full weeks in YS they still wouldn't be able to see it all. It's huge and there is just so much exploring to do there. We picnicked a lot and hung out at the rivers and just took in as much as we could of this magnificent place!

We were fortunate to see lots of bison herds and elk herds too! And bison swimming in the rivers, which my oldest grandson who became the go-pro videographer for the trip got lots of video of.

A few other places we stopped...

stopped at Norris MT. hot springs for a soak, my hubby and I are natural hot spring freaks and have been to many in WA, OR, ID and MT, and although this one is a little commercialized, the gal that owns it is a cool person and we met all kinds of new friends! We also stopped in Virginia City MT. ghost town and that was a lot of fun and the kids got to mine for gold and we spent the day just meandering through the shops and rode their little train from Virginia City to Nevada City, MT.

All in all we had a fantastic trip and our grandsons were sad about leaving YS, they want to go back real soon! It's a great place for kids to see animals in the wild and not just in a zoo, and for them to learn conservation and the respect of the wildlife's habitats and to learn why it is so important to be good earth stewards and to learn just how important it is to protect these animals and also to just unplug and just take a breather from the outter world and get in tune with their connection to the natural world that surrounds them..... and last but not least to learn how great this country is that they live in, National parks and State parks are the bomb, and we are all very fortunate to have them!

Boo Boo and Yogi are alive and well in Jellystone!

BajaLuna - 8-13-2014 at 12:02 PM

P.S. I will say too...being a Virgo I am a planner and organizer by nature, and although I planned many things for our trip down to a gnat's you-know-what, the days we had nothing planned were some of the best, just allowing the park to come to us and take in whatever came across our path was so great!

One can tend to want to be in the fast lane there, because there is so much you want to see in a such a short amount of time and you're trying to fit it all in, I had to remind myself...slow down, get on YS time, and whatever we miss, we can always come back! Aww yes retirement can't come fast enough, sign me up for 2+ weeks in YS!

danaeb - 8-13-2014 at 12:07 PM

Thanks Luna. Great report. I spent my childhood taking summer trips to the western parks. My first memory at 4 was the evening "fire fall" from Glacier Point at Yosemite. Stupid idea really, to send burning embers down into the valley, and it was ended in the 60s, but fun while it lasted.

I don't know how old you are and you didn't mention this so forgive me if this is redundant. The NPS lifetime senior pass is the best deal around if you spend any time at the parks, monuments, BLM land, etc. Age 62 and older, $10 for life, all the occupants in the car get free entrance and in-park camping is 50% off.

Another fun thing for kids is the Junior Ranger program. Your 9yr old may be a little too old the next time you go, but younger one might have fun with it.

CortezBlue - 8-13-2014 at 07:30 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BajaLuna
We are heading to Yellowstone soon for a 2 week RV road trip with our 2 Grandsons age 9 and 7 (are we crazy? Nah it will be a blast! I have researched places of interest, have a loose itinerary don't want to miss anything but want to stay open too to allow being in the moment. Have reservations already for places we are staying and things like wagon-ride cookout, ranger led hikes (which will be informative for the kids), and a bus tour of the lower loop, as we will drive the upper loop ourselves, we will have lots of time for just meandering about...anyways...

Just wondering since me nor the hubby have been there since we were kids, if anyone has anything they'd like to share on things to be sure to see and do in Yellowstone or points in between!

Here's our plan thus far...

Leaving WA via I-90..spending the night in Wallace Idaho and doing the silver mine tour, spending the next night at Lewis and Clark Caverns and doing the cavern tour, entering into Yellowstone via the North entrance, camping in the north end first...then moving down to the west side and then the south and eastern side a few days later. Stopping along the way to swim in the boiling river, and fire hole canyon river too. Leaving via the west gate and heading to Virginia City Montana ghost town and then hitting Norris hot springs and Missouri headwaters State Park on the way back home.

Our interests..

wildlife, of course
river swimming and hot springs dippin' along the way
day hikes off the beaten path.
educational stuff: Lewis and Clark, Native American, geology, conservation.

any good tips? Any cool places we should stop along the way there and back? Any "must not miss" things in Yellowstone?

thanks in advance on anything you can share!




Funny you should ask. If anyone noticed I have been absent for the past month or so doing a ton of Travel Trailer Traveling. Since retiring in May we bought a 23 ft trailer that we pulled 4000 miles behind our Ford F150 EcoBoost.

So we spent a bunch of time in Idaho and Yellowstone and Grand Tetons.

First off we did pull our TT from the North Entrance to the South Entrance and through the Tetons.

We camped at Fishing Bridge RV Park.

I will tell you that you had better have long sleeve shirts, pants and a hat. Have your Off Deep Woods ready to roll. We were severely bitten up.

I will also tell you that after 2 days we were ready to get out. So many people just stop dead in the middle of the road because a Bison is at the side of the road.

The place was PACKED and it was just crazy. I also got my GoPro stolen while at the park, Bummer!

Also, make sure to tell everyone that you will be out of Cell service while at Yellowstone. Verizon will work in some spots, but that is about it. TMobile or ATT we were not able to find any service.

Had fun seeing everything and I'm sure you and yours will to.