Yellowstone Road Trip with Travel Trailer

[cidley69]

LOL: Meant to say YellowSTONE, not just Yellow.

Looking for advice, ideas, route ideas, camping spot suggestions, or tales of your awesome adventures.

Thinking of heading to Yellowstone this coming summer, towing a travel trailer. Would like to make it a loop drive, to avoid seeing the same areas both directions. Would take a Mon-Fri off work, and have 7-8 days to travel with.

Maybe head south via Lethbridge, Great Falls, Gardiner, then north through McAllister, Butte, Missoula, Kalispell, West-East Glacier, Babb, Pincher Creek, Longview....

Anyone done a route similar to this, and can recommend nice campgrounds along the way? What type is best, state, forestry sites, private...?

Is travel along the Interstates (I15, I90) preferred or not as nice/scenic as the secondary highways?

Earlier in the summer better to avoid smoke and fire bans?

[bjstare]

Sounds like a great trip. I don't have a lot of advice on the route, but a general note that interstates are really good at getting you somewhere fast, and really bad at showing you the country/scenery. Decent mandate is stay away from the interstates until you find yourself crunched for time, then pop onto the interstate to make it up if you need to at some point haha.

[eblend]

I won't be able to help you much, but when we drove down, we took the Going-to-the-sun road through the mountains in Montana, which is a destination in itself if you ask me, it's pretty amazing. We stayed in Bozeman Hot Springs Campground, which was pretty nice. Has a pool as well. They have cabins too (4 walls and a roof, wood framed beds with toppers...bring your own sheets type of setup), but lots of people with RVs and tents as such as well. This was on the way back from Yellowstone, not in Yellowstone itself or it's immediate surroundings, but was a good place. Did ziplining and white water rafting here, was fun. I recall looking at camping in Yellowstone...but it was all sold out, and sells out fast, so plan ahead.

Bozeman Hot Springs Camp Ground



Some awesome white water rafting (was my first time)



We stayed at a very expensive hotel right outside of the west gates, and expensive does not mean nice...just very limited options when we went.

[ExtraSlow]

Going to the sun road is nice, but you can't tow yourj trailer across it (AFAIK). Totally agree that you want to avoid interstates.
Beartooth pass is amazing. State forest and nathional forest campgrounds are usually very good, much preferred to private campgrounds. sometimes more rustic.

[BavarianBeast]

Yellowstone is okay. It’s more or less what you see an hour or two from Calgary..

I think Zion or Yosemite is worth the extra mileage

[ThePenIsMightier]

Send pics of Beth. She is want need.

[bigboom]

We did a Yellowstone trip with our travel trailer this past summer. We went through Fernie (mountain biked 2 days and stayed at the provincial park campground), crossed the border at Roosville, Whitefish (biked and spent a day at the lake and stayed at the KOA), Bozeman and then into Yellowstone where we set up base at Indian Creek campground within the park. There, we spent 4 nights and just did daily trips seeing all the sites.

On the way back we camped at Farragut and hit up Silverwood for a couple days and then back through Roosville to Chinook campground for a couple nights. This was all done over the span of two weeks, if you want more details feel free to PM me.

[dubhead]

Been to Yellowstone twice now, last year in September with the toddler. First of all it is freaking busy in the summer. Our first trip was in July. The September trip was a bit more manageable crowd wise. What's your camping rig? Definitely best to get situated and explore via car, don't be the guy with a massive 5th wheel or Class A motorhome trying to find a parking spot at an attraction.

First time we were tent camping and stayed at Grant Village campground, nice and central for exploring the park though not a lot of hookups or amenities in the campgrounds within the park. Trees are sparse at Grant Village so not much privacy. Second trip we stayed in West Yellowstone. A bit more effort to get around to do things in the park but lots of amenities and West Yellowstone is like a big Banff without the Aussies. The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Centre in West Yellowstone is good for seeing bears and wolves up close, you can also hear the wolves howling at night if you stay in town.

On the way down:
-Greatfalls Sip and Dip lounge for the mermaids. Even methier around there these days it seems, the wife almost got in a fight with a street walker on the way back up last fall while out having a smoke. Must be why the hipsters seem to be moving in.
-Helena State Capital not much else to see. The cathedral is fairly impressive for one in this part of the world
-Butte mining museum, the big pit lots of bars some fairly historic
-Boulder Hot Spring Inn is a little haunted hotel. Rich history, party spot in the 20's and carried on through prohibition then spent some time as a sanitarium. Seems to be one of few OG Montana hot springs not taken over by wealthy investors. Definitely haunted.
- From there we always stop at Norris Hot Spring if driving through this part of the world. It's a great little hippy hot spring oasis tucked in a coulee. Nice pool, great food and live music most nights. Small campground so you have to book earlier to stay on site.
-North of Norris is a little end of the road called Pony The Pony Bar is a real local Montana watering hole where you get a look from the hole bar when you walk in, a fun place to stop for a beer. Apparently there's a beautiful mountain lake behind Pony that a local recommended to us. We got less than 1km up the road before we saw squatters living in trailers and inside crumbled buildings, I swear I could hear banjos so we high tailed it out of there.
-Ennis is a little town big on fly fishing on the Missouri River just south of Norris. Great bourbon at Willie's Distillery. Their huckleberry liqueur is really tasty in coffee. We have blown through our exemption limit stopping here more than once. The Outfitters in town are worth checking out, pretty much every variation of "scary black gun" is out on the shelves not even locked up, just a bit different than here...
- Virginia City original state capitol and old gold rush semi-ghost town. Little train tour is a bit of fun for kids.
- Earthquake lake seemed interesting on the drive by. It was created by a massive rockslide during an earthquake in the 50's. Lots of campgrounds and thick forests through that area.
- Can also come down via Bozeman. White Sulphur Springs is ok. Bozeman = rich cunts hipsters and university students. The pass up and over from Mammoth Hot Springs to the main park is narrow and windy might not be so fun with a big rig.

Yellowstone:
- It's busy. The tourists are likely more of a hazard then wildlife, if you think you've seen boneheaded shit in Banff just wait till you get down there.
- Old faithful will be busy. There's a sneaky viewing spot on the second floor balcony of the lodge above the car drop off loop. Great view and usually a lot less busy up there.
- Norris Geyser Basin is likely my favorite spot, very land before time and other worldly there.
- Mud pots were a hit with the toddler
-Lamar Valley in the north is slower tourist wise and great for wildlife viewing. The biggest wolf pack is up here and it's likely the best spot to hear or wolves. The wife and I enjoyed a nice sunset picnic up there on the first trip. Pulled out in a roadside turnout and sat back and enjoyed the view, pesky tourists were constantly stopping to ask what wildlife we were looking at though... including one couple who ripped up then parked and ran across the road to see what we were looking at totally missing the 2 deer literally 10m directly in front of where they parked. It took them about 5 minutes of trying to find something to see before I pointed out the deer they almost parked on top of.
-Plenty of other Yellowstone tips and to-do's out there.

On the way back or beyond
-The Tetons are beautiful and directly south of Yellowstone.
- Jackson= Cowboy Banff and $$$$$$, I've always enjoyed it down there.
-Craters of Moon a bit out of the way but really ties the trip together driving through the Snake River Plain which was blown out by the YS caldera as it moved east, the lava flows at Craters being created by the caldera when it was located farther west millions of years ago . Stumbled upon EBR-1 near Arco, ID on the way to CoM which is the first Nuclear Power Plant and is a neat tour.

I'm sure there's more but that should be a pretty good start.