Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Yellowstone Trip

Hey guys,
Need help and input planning a Trip to Yellowstone for June.
Wanna take the kids (4 kids ages 7 to 14) to Yellowstone.
We will have to fly and plan to then rent an RV, as that seems the best option at this point.
High points would be Old Faithful, thermophile pools, wildlife.

Any recs on where to start reading/researching? Wat to avoid. There are plenty of websites, but I trust the experience here.

The entire northwest will still be covered in a 2 mile thick sheet of solid clear ice in June. Sorry.

North end of park around Gardiner is the best. Cody Wy is worth a trip. Jackson is basically an extension of California.

If you have not got your camping reservations yet you are to late by about 2 months.

You can't beat Old Faithful. The entire park is a wonderland. It is mighty crowded, I mean 2-hour backups in the traffic, in June, July and August.
I could spend a whole week in that park.

I flew into Bozeman and stayed in Gardiner; good park access from there.

The Lamar Valley is the place to see if wildlife is a priority. I have been there 3 times and each time we have seen bears and wolves. Two of those encounters were with grizzly bears guarding a elk/deer kill from wolves.

What is it you want to do there? Drive from parking lot to parking lot in your rented RV, to see the sights?

Bring bear spray griz like spice when they snack, bison like to be hand fed oats!

River rafting on the Snake River outside of Jackson is a ton of fun but the water level may high in June.

Lots of hiking.

Lot of traffic jams on the roads with people stopping to walk among the buffalo.

West Yellowstone area is probably your best bet. Get going yesterday to find a place to camp tho. Also, be up and in the park at opening. It gets full quick. If you go down to the lodge, the parking lot will be a zoo if you don’t get there early. Lots and lots of things to do and see but be a bit wary too. Some gal got et by one of the bears there last summer.

We went last June. Drove instead of flying - 4 kids here as well. Went to Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Cody, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Rocky Mountain NP over 14 days. Did a VRBO on the Madison River in Cameron MT for the Yellowstone days. Yellowstone will be a ton of driving any way you slice it, so having something other than an RV was nice there. We basically did Yellowstone Lake on the way through from Cody to Cameron, then spent a day on the lower thermal features (Old Faithful, Grand Prismatic, etc.) and then a day on the northern side of the park (Mammoth Hot Springs mainly), ending at Artist's Point in the middle of the park. We took a day off in the middle of the Yellowstone days and stayed at the VRBO except for a short trip to the Earthquake Lake visitors center to enjoy the local scenery and give everyone a break from the van.

We did raft the Snake River in Jackson - that was definitely a high point. An unexpected surprise was the scenery driving through Bighorn NF from Sheridan to Cody. The Buffalo Bill Dam was a neat stop on the way into the park from Cody.

I stayed in my travel trailer @ Gardiner in July. It made me never ever ever ever want to go back. If you live in a huge city it might be ok....if you live in a rural town, it'll seem crowded and rude.

We spent a week there and hit everything. We would leave by 4 to beat the traffic.

Have a brother that lives very close. We spent some time out there a few years ago. I was surprised at how busy the sites are and how far apart the stuff was. We saw them all, but you will spend a solid day driving and not see everything. Keep that in mind

We got lucky. We pulled up at old faithful, parked and walked over. The thing erupted right away so not much time spent there. Over to the ice cream stand and on our way to the next haha

Grand prismatic was one of my favorite areas

The grand canyon there is bad ass too. Very nice country

Right down in front of my brothers house

Start here: https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/index.htm

Campground info (with one reference to RV stuff) is here: https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/campgrounds.htm

For Grand Teton National Park, start here: https://www.nps.gov/grte/planyourvisit/index.htm There is a little bit of RV parking there, too. Colter Bay Village has some.

This is pretty late notice to plan such an adventure. In any event, there is no way I would want to drive an RV around Yellowstone Park. I would want to to have the use of a car and stay as close to the park as possible (assuming no reservations are available inside the park at this point in time, which may be incorrect), so I could drive in and out. The speed limits in the park are around 45 mph, and there is a lot of traffic and stoppages for critters, so moving around is slow, plus the drive time to and from the park. If you can get some rooms inside the park, so much the better. Call or search right now if you want to try for rooms.

This^^

Get up and out early! Get to where you want to be before first light. You will see a lot of critters and not a lot of tourists. Bring a few sets of binoculars and a spotting scope if you have one.

A few years back, if you were a certain age you could buy a lifetime pass to the National Parks for like 10 bucks. The pass could be used for a carload of people. I think the park service discontinued that but I would look into what pass discounts might be available.

Unfortunately, trips like this require reservations way in advance, like a year.