This was our sixth trip to Yellowstone in nine years! I guess we like it! For wildlife lovers like we are, Yellowstone never disappoints–and it’s got amazing scenery and thermal features as added bonuses.
The drive from Glacier National Park to Yellowstone National Park was too far for us to do in our RV in one day, so we spent a night in Helena, the capital of Montana. This was a great place to restock our dwindling supplies after more than three weeks on the road. And we stopped by the capital itself to take a few pictures.
Yellowstone is so large that few people can visit the whole park during one vacation. We tend to split our time into two different locations to cut down on some of the driving and maximize the variety of what we can see. On this trip, we first camped just outside of the north side of the park in the town of Gardiner, Montana. Our campsite was right on the Yellowstone River–very refreshing!
In June 2022, there was a 500-year flood on the Yellowstone River that took out huge chunks of the only road connecting Gardiner to the North Entrance of Yellowstone (at Mammoth Hot Springs). Park engineers determined that the road was too damaged to be repaired and instead upgraded the original stagecoach road. Within four months, the North Entrance had reopened, with a longer, higher, and windier road into the park. Since our last visit to Yellowstone was in 2021, this new road was new for us, and we got lots of practice driving it in and out of the park.
First Stop: Ice cream in the Mammoth Hot Springs area followed by the obligatory elk pictures. The wild elk love to hang out on the manicured lawns in this area of Yellowstone.
Part of the reason we stay on this side of the park is to give us relative proximity to the Lamar Valley, which is famous for housing several wolf packs. While it’s an hour to get to the Lamar Valley from Gardiner, there really isn’t another location that’s any closer for us to camp in our RV. And it’s a beautiful drive in and out of the valley. What did we see on our first evening? A moose mom and her calf, a coyote, a bald eagle, pronghorn, an osprey, 2,000 bison (no exaggeration), including lots of calves, but no wolves.
Next morning we headed out again to the Lamar Valley in search of wolves. Nope. But we did see a black bear and her two adorable tiny cubs. (Perhaps you are getting sick of our bear pictures, but we sure don’t get sick of seeing them.)
We also did an e-bike ride along a portion of the old road until we came to the first place where the river had taken out the road. Wow! We learned from others that there were several spots in the road that the river had destroyed, so it was obvious why they didn’t just try to fix this road, but instead upgraded the old stagecoach road. So, our bike ride in that direction was shortened, but we road around Gardiner and discovered a few other gems.
One tradition is to get ice cream as often as we can while on vacation. This was our dessert before our evening drive out to Lamar Valley, which did not yield any wolves. But we saw some pronghorn, a coyote, and tons of bison, plus a beautiful sunset!
We tried again to spot wolves in Lamar Valley next morning and we were finally successful, though they were so far away that the picture is not very good. We didn’t even know that they were wolves until we enlarged the image on the camera later in the day. A black bear and a coyote family rounded out our morning views.
After a significant downpour and a time to do laundry, we road our e-bikes around the Blacktail Plateau Drive. Normally a one-way 6-mile drive over a gravel and dirt road with beautiful vistas, we decided to try it on our e-bikes and go both ways. It was challenging but gorgeous. Here is a link to Hank’s short Relive video of our Blacktail Plateau bike ride.
We celebrated our accomplishment with dinner at Follow Yer Nose BBQ (a food truck from a restaurant we had eaten at four years ago in Emigrant, MT) and a time of sitting and watching the Yellowstone River at our campsite.
Because Yellowstone is so huge, we find it best to camp in two different locations, so the next day was a travel day from Gardiner, MT, down to Grant Village Campground right on Yellowstone Lake. This required Hank to drive the RV up the very-windy North Entrance at Mammoth Hot Springs (the old stagecoach road that was upgraded after the 2022 flood, but still contained four 15-mph switchbacks and a 10% uphill grade) and he did great!
We enjoyed the sights along the Grand Loop Road, especially stopping at Swan Lake to see a trumpeter swan and a sandhill crane nesting in the grass. On our drive over to Grant Village, we crossed the Continental Divide twice!
That evening we drove into the other valley that is famous for wolves, Hayden Valley. We caught a glimpse of one wolf through someone else’s spotting scope, but it was very fleeting. We also just enjoyed the beautiful sights along the Yellowstone River in this valley.
Next morning it was snowing, but just flurries, so we headed out again through Hayden Valley and on to the Canyon area of Yellowstone. We were treated to beautiful views of the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls from the South Rim, and then it really started to snow as we briefly explored the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and visited the visitor center near there.
We visited Sulphur Caldron and the Mud Volcano Area before heading back to the campground. We made it back home to the RV and hunkered down to wait out the weather–it snowed off and on for several hours–in June! Our campground is at 7,800 feet elevation, so that had something to do with it.
The following morning there was still quite a bit of snow on the ground and vehicles, but it was bright and sunny (though cold). We headed in the other direction to the Old Faithful area of the park. Sadly, Old Faithful had a less-than-optimum eruption (though we’ve certainly seen her previous sky-high performances). We enjoyed a short hike to Solitary Geyser, which also seemed to be underperforming. We wondered if the cold weather had something to do with these small eruptions.
While we have seen most of the famous sights in Yellowstone, we’re always looking to do something we haven’t done before. So, we drove out the Fountain Flat Drive (north of the traffic jam at Grand Prismatic Spring) to the end of the road. We enjoyed a chilly picnic lunch by the Firehole River and then hopped on our e-bikes for an easy bike ride along an old railroad route, the Freight Road Trail.
We arrived at the junction of the Grand Prismatic Spring Overlook Trail, locked our bikes and hiked up the 1/4-mile trail to enjoy our best view ever of this iconic spring. Usually it’s covered in steam or washed out, but on this day it was almost as pretty as the photos you see in all the guidebooks.
Here’s a link to the short Relive video that Hank made for this beautiful bike ride on the Freight Road Trail.
Next morning we left Yellowstone through the South Entrance and began our visit to our final national park of the trip, Grand Teton National Park (next blog post). As always, thanks for reading!
Hank and Cindy – What a spectacular trip with wonderful photos. So glad you are having this adventure!!
Lynn, so glad that you are along the journey with us. We are so thankful we have this opportunity to view creation and to capture some of that majesty.
Hi Cindy and Hank,
I feel as if I am learning about our national parks through your wonderful trailblazer site. How self-contained and thoughtful you are about your adventures. Thank you for sharing.
Diane
We’re glad our posts are educational, Diane! We definitely enjoy sharing our travels with others. Thanks so much for reading. Enjoy your summer travels as well!
Cindy
What a wonderful trip! Thought I should let you know that the photos didn’t show up on the 4th episode.
I am in AWE of your travel log! Thanks for sharing it with me!!
Thank you for that info, Peggy. Hank has now fixed the problem. We appreciate the heads-up!
Cindy