Out West Adventure || Yellowstone National Park - Southern State of Mind Blog by Heather

Thanks for joining me this week on our family road trip! If you missed it, I am doing a week-long series recapping our time out west. So far I have shared some highlights from Grand Teton National Park and the Jackson, Wyoming area- today we are heading to Yellowstone National Park in Montana.

1. Grand Teton National Park

2. Jackson Hole, Wyoming

3. Yellowstone National Park

4. Wilson, Wyoming

5. Sun Valley, Idaho

Before I share our Yellowstone highlights- there are two things to know when planning your trip to Yellowstone:

First- there are five entrances into the park- North, Northeast, South, East, West.
Second- the main park route- called Grand Loop Road is designed in a figure eight pattern- an upper loop and lower loop.

WEST YELLOWSTONE

Once I knew these two little tips, it felt much easier to understand how to tackle this massive park! When we went to Yellowstone- we drove from Jackson Hole and went west and north through Idaho to come into Yellowstone from the West Entrance. It was about 2.5 hour drive. We were very last minute on our plans (decided once we were in Jackson to do the trip!) and found a last minute hotel room at the Holiday Inn in West Yellowstone. It wasn’t fancy but perfectly fine! It was super close the park entrance and there was a small cute little western downtown area with restaurants and shops. If you are planning ahead of time, I’ve heard there is an Under Canvas near the West Yellowstone entrance which would be fun to do.

We enjoyed our evening in West Yellowstone and visited the Grizzly & Wolf Refuge. This was a cool spot where lots of bears and wolves that can no longer live in the wild come to hang. There were some seriously big boys here! We ate at Buffalo Bar for dinner and then just walked around the small and quaint downtown before heading back to our hotel. The entire experience gave us great western vibes and the perfect launch into Yellowstone.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

We entered the park bright and early and stared our route down south through the park. This was the first fella we spotted- and I just knew it was going to be a great day!

SOUTHERN HEATHER TIP:

Must get GyPSy APP – it’s $15. Be sure to buy and download when you have a signal and it works through GPS. We really enjoyed this addition to our self guided driving tour through Yellowstone.
Another piece of advice? Your family will roll their eyes when you make them pull over to take the picture. BUT TAKE THE PICTURE! I just wish I had thought to take one at the Grand Teton National Park sign too!

Our trip to Yellowstone was short and sweet and I know we only got a taste of the grandness. It was more of a “box-checker” than a true immersion. However- this was a side trip to us from our Jackson visit and was the perfect addition to our trip.

Brian and I had already seen Old Faithful on a previous trip to Yellowstone before kids, so it wasn’t a huge priority for us and we didn’t factor it’s schedule into our day. We just came in through West Yellowstone entrance, spent the day working our way south through the park and then left through the South Entrance. The bonus here is that it dumps you right into Grand Teton National Park and back to home base in Jackson.

GRAND CANYON OF THE YELLOWSTONE

Here you can see our route- we did a big loop.

Definitely a whirlwind excursion, but OH SO FUN! Obviously we could have spent an entire week in the park- but this was the perfect glimpse and a great little side adventure to our out west trip.

Tomorrow we will tackle Wilson, Wyoming – then it’s off to Sun Valley Idaho!

XOXO-

Heather