We are planning to take a family trip to Yellowstone NP in summer of 2012 and are looking for advice. My wife and I, with our 6 children (ages 2 to 14), will be taking our Suburban and 34' travel tailer (304 Surveyor) from Nebraska. We will probably set aside about 10-12 days for the trip. With our large family, range of ages, and length of stay, we strongly prefer hook ups for electric, water, and sewer. Also, a little space for the kids move around and burn off energy is important, such as a good playground.
I know very little about Yellowstone, but it looks like RV options in the park with full hookup are very limited.
- Is there a best time of summer to visit? We were thinking June.
- Any suggestions are were would be a good place to stay at or near Yellowstone?
- Any favorite spots to visit in the park, especially family friendly spots?
- Any ideas for a good route to travel to minimize work for our suburban towing?
- Any other thoughts or suggestions?
We are also planning for this trip, so I will be interested in all the replies. We only have 2 daughters, ages 4 and 7, so we won't be quite as packed as you guys are, but need the same options.
First of all, be aware (if you are not already) that anytime during the summer Yellowstone and the surrounding is going to be crowded. Very. Crowded. Jume may be the least crowded of the summer months, but you can also experience some very chilly weather.
Waits to get into the park can be long, especially if you get there after, say, 9am. There is no campground with full hook ups in the park, and only electric is at Fishing Bridge.
Grizzly in West Yellowstone gets universally great reviews on this site, there are also several other highly rated rv parks in West Yellowstone which might have more things to do for kids.
We stayed at Henry's Lake State Park. About 10-15 minutes west of yellowstone. We loved it!
Try to find a couple of hours to visit the Grizzly bear Rehab centre right in Yellowstone. Kids have the opportunity to go into bear cage and hide food. (They do remove the bears first!!!)
We visited in early Aug 2006 (four days and five nights) with three other sets of friends and family. We all had the best vacation ever! We also spent time in Cody, Wy, Grand Tetons, Craters of the Moon, McCall, ID and Lewis and Clark Caverns.
Fishing Bridge is the only CG inside the park with full hookups. It's not a great cg but served our purposes very well. We were gone all day and spent little time there anyway. The utilities are under construction for upgrades.
The more central location cut down on the daily driving.
While there was traffic and crowds, I did not think it was as bad as others felt.
If you want to do any of the inside park activities like the horse ride cookout or have a fine dinner at the Lake Lodge hotel, GET RESERVATIONS! We booked every thing a year or more in advance.
my favorite spots were Canyon, Old Faithful, and Mammoth. Can't think of any sights that dissapointed.
We opted to have lunch at the spots at each village rather than spend half the morning packing and hauling food around. Much easier to stroll in and everyone could get what they wanted. we ate dinner out three of the five nights. Breakfast was at camp each morning.
Whatever you decide,your family will have a great time as yellowstone is such an amazing place.
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Fishing Bridge is full hookup not just electric. We liked staying in the park since it saved us time driving in each day. We really enjoyed looking for wildlife although we did do the Geyser loop one day. We spent 3 days at Yellowstone of our month-long trip from PA to the West. We wished that we'd had more time and definitely plan to go back. Based on what we liked most, I'd opt to camp without hookups at Canyon campground since we spent most of our time on that side of the park. I think we drove about 200 miles within the park in the 3 days we were there. I never saw a playground while we were there and the sites at Fishing Bridge are very close. It's essentially a parking lot with hookups. You can walk to Fishing Bridge Visitor Center and store from the campground.
Sue Bee wrote: There is no campground with full hook ups in the park, and only electric is at Fishing Bridge.
Correction: Fishing Bridge has water/electric/sewage hook-ups. Due to an electric upgrade, some sites did not have electricity last year, but hoping all sites have full hook-ups this year.
While there was traffic and crowds, I did not think it was as bad as others felt.
We opted to have lunch at the spots at each village rather than spend half the morning packing and hauling food around. Much easier to stroll in and everyone could get what they wanted. we ate dinner out three of the five nights. Breakfast was at camp each morning.
Whatever you decide,your family will have a great time as yellowstone is such an amazing place.
I agree that the crowds were not unbearable. We were there in Aug 2010. However, we packed lunch every day because we did not want to waste time going back to the camper or waiting in line for food in the villages.
You might want to consider the Colter Bay RV Village in Grand Teton National Park. It is run by the park concessionaire. It is a full-hookup campground capable of handling large RVs and it is located just a short walk away from Jackson Lake. We used it as a base of operations for exploring both Yellowstone and the Tetons. The drive from Colter Bay to Old Faithful is ~45 minutes. It takes about the same time to get to Jackson WY. Because of the size of Yellowstone Park, if you stay in West Yellowsone you will be nearly as far (time-wise) from the northeast corner as Colter Bay is.
As for towing, you can come north to the Tetons and Yellowstone from Casper WY on US26. The grades are moderate even though the pass west of DuBois is at over 9,000 feet. There was construction on US26 this year but I would expect it would be finished by 2012.
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Full hookups and a playground/pool are available at Rocky Mountain RV Park in Gardner, MT. You can see the North Entrance to YNP (Roosevelt Arch) from the upper RV sites.
Reservations are essential anytime school is out although there were several empty pull-thru spaces the whole week we were there in June of 10. (It can be cold in June.)
Gardner is as convenient to North Gate, park headquarters, and Mamoth Hot Springs as West Yellowstone ie to West Gate and Big Sand.
Wherever you stay, you will be back.
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