We finally went to Yellowstone, which we've been meaning to do for years! Check another one off the National Parks Bucket List. (Zion is still the favorite though!) Never having been there, it was hard to know what to plan to do, and even reading a Yellowstone magazine and searching online didn't fully prepare us for the experience. So here are my Yellowstone Do's and Don't's , just FYI. :)
DO randomly meet your sister at a gas station in Idaho Falls!! Here's my facebook post about it:
And THIS is why it's so cool to be living close to my sister! Since great minds think alike, we happened to plan similar vacations. Different destinations, but the same route. On the same weekend. And we left at about the same time and both stopped to see the Idaho Falls temple and ended up seeing each other at the gas station! If we didn't see each other almost weekly and weren't already going on a trip together in 2 weeks, we could have just done this vacation together too haha!
It was hilarious, they went to Jackson Hole and we went to Yellowstone at the same time. :) So that was fun.
DO stop and see the Idaho Falls Temple, even though it's closed for construction and you can't go in the gate. :)
DO go the Northern way so you can drive through a tiny corner of a state you've never visited: Montana! I was so excited!
DO bring a hammock! Wow this thing has been a hit with the kids!
"mi, mi, mi" or "help me get in Mom!!"
DO, definitely do, camp. 2 nights camping was great. Maris was so ridiculously dirty, but it was fun!!
Do have campfires every night, obviously!! Kids live for it!!
Do spend some time exploring at the campsite.
and try to keep warm in the mornings! (and be silly, that's always fun)
DO go see random things like a 10,000 year old petrified tree.
But here's where some don'ts come in...
Maybe DON'T waste almost an entire day driving all the way around the park in hopes of seeing some animals and swimming in a river/hot spring, only to see ONE smallish bear from the car (you can see his little black head),
stopping at Mammoth Hot Springs when it was boiling hot and deciding NOT to hike around as planned,
not be able to find the swimming spot, get stuck in road construction, stop at cool "paint pots" only to find that it's not "a quick walk" from the parking lot, but a 3 mile hike, and give up and turn back and not get to see anything the whole last day. Day 3 was pretty much a waste for us inexperienced Yellowstone tourists! We did not take into account that the speed limit everywhere in the park is 35mph, so driving anywhere takes like twice as long as you think it will! A day full of DONTS!
Oh well. DO stop at the great-grandparents' house in Pocatello on the way home for a fun time with extended family that pretty much makes up for the disappointing day.
We're so grateful for every chance to spend with our (great-) grandparents! (these are the Murrays, Brad's parents.)
Now back to the awesome things we did see...
DO! Go see Old Faithful! There are huge crowds but it did not disappoint! Totally worth waiting for.
Maris getting "blown away" by how cool Old Faithful was, haha.
Picture with the slightly smoking Old Faithful post-eruption after the crowds had died down.
For sure DO hike around and see all the amazing geysers around Old Faithful. This was by far the coolest part of our trip, but it was the first thing we did and we didn't know it was going to be the coolest part, or we would have stayed longer! We could have spent several more hours there exploring.
There were just so many cool and different geological features there. Some that smoked, some that bubbled, some that occasionally spouted. Some that were still. Some that were colorful, some big and some tiny. Just a ton of cool little holes in the ground all over the place.
In the background you can see another geyser smoking- there was a whole other loop over there we didn't go on, but wish we would have!
oh well. we did have fun, and stopped before anyone got grumpy, so that day was a win. :)
Do go see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone! It was way cool, with 2 big waterfalls. We did a little hike there.
But DON'T expect your kids to do 2 hikes in a row, even if they are both only like 1 mile. And don't hike with only a couple of snacks in your bag if it's anywhere near 11am. Your 7-year-old child may have a meltdown and demand lunch. :)
Do take pictures of your son at every fire hydrant he sees, he's so funny!
DO stop and pull over to check out exciting things! We pulled over several times for animals, mostly Bison. We even had a Buffalo song to sing every time "Buff, a-lo, buff, buff, a-lo" (after the Wigalo song Eric taught us from Scout Camp haha).
once there was one right next to the road!
You can't really tell from this picture, but all those black dots are buffalo, it looked like something straight out of the pioneer times, classic American West! Very cool.
Do stop when you see something cool! I wish we had stopped more- on the Road from Madison to Old Faithful there were like 7 times when I thought "oh, we should stop and see that mud fountain" or whatever, but we were on our way somewhere else. We should have stopped to see it, because that area ended up being the coolest part.
This was a river where we ate lunch.
DON'T waste time on Yellowstone Lake. Unless you have nothing else to do. Yes, it's a big lake, yes it's pretty and has cool black sand. But my kids have been to a million lakes. We go to them all the time. So it wasn't worth the time to drive down there. It wasn't really hot enough to swim so we just played on the shore a bit and then left.
And lastly, do plan longer drives for naptime. :) I'm glad we got to go on our camping trip for the summer to a place we've never been. And like I said, the area around Old Faithful is something you should definitely see in your lifetime. Yay for family vacation!
Oh I realized I should explain the title. My family loves this silly movie called Meet the Deedles, a Disney Channel Movie from the 90's. It takes place in Yellowstone and we like to quote funny parts of it... hence the "surf Wyoming!!!" Hahaha, I kept thinking of the movie while I was there, especially whenever I saw a park ranger. :)
