Over the summer my kids and I (both teenagers, both in high school as of this year!) went on some fun little road trips together and it made me feel excited to do more exploring in this part of the country that we live in. From Denver, the south entrance to Yellowstone is about 9 hours without stops (add an hourish for gas and bathroom and Starbucks breaks). Back in July when I was high on successful trips to Ouray and Santa Fe, I decided we were due to revisit Yellowstone. My kids hadn’t been there since they were little and they didn’t have many memories of it. And that was far enough back that my memories of the park were a bit fuzzy too.
No Crowds
The first great thing about going to Yellowstone in September was… the absence of other people! In July 2023, the park hosted 969,692 visitors. During our two full days of exploring the park, there was only one time that we encountered a tour bus full of people crowding a main viewing area for selfies, and that was at Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone – Artist Point, one of the most popular vistas in the park. Even then, we just milled around for about 10 minutes waiting our turn until they cleared out and it was relatively quiet again. One morning I woke the kids up at 7:30 (they protested, but it was a compromise from 7) so we could get an “early start.” We ate breakfast at the canteen then drove to the Mud Volcano. We had the place to ourselves for the first 45 minutes! It was absolutely delightful. The quiet, the brisk morning air… I took this picture of our shadows on the steam from Sizzling Basin:
Parking is Easy
Even when the parking lot for Grand Prismatic Spring (one of the most popular sites in the park) had a long queue, we just parked in the pullout on the road and walked a short distance to the trailhead. We never had long backups for roadside wildlife viewing either, and only had one or two other cars sharing a vast pullout with us in the Hayden Valley when we had lunch 30′ from a grazing bison.
Short Wait for Meals
We stayed in the Lake Lodge Cabins and ate our meals in Wylie’s Canteen which we could walk to from our cabin in minutes. On Saturday evening at 7PM, we encountered our longest wait to order dinner — I believe there were 7 people ahead of us. LOL! We practically had the dining hall to ourselves. In hindsight, perhaps the short lines were partly because food was running out? I’m exaggerating a little, but the last weekend in September was the last weekend the Lake Lodge area of the park was open for the season. The kitchen manager was absolutely cutting it close on ordering to minimize surplus. On the first day we were pretty bummed to see heavily redacted menus after having investigated food options online ahead of time. Then as the weekend progressed, various things became scarce. No gluten-free buns as of Friday morning, no onion rings Friday night… By Sunday morning the only topping available for oatmeal was brown sugar and some frozen blueberries. Having said that, we absolutely did not go hungry. The seasoned fries that we had at every meal were really good. They never ran out of bacon (not a plus for my vegetarian friends, but a plus for my family on our oatmeal days), egg sandwiches (brekkie) or burgers (dinner) and I think they had a bean burger through closing too.
Oh, also my kids were disappointed that there were no shakes on offer at the Canteen. We did find ice cream at the Fishing Bridge General Store, but it was too late for us at that point. Thank goodness I packed lots of treats for the trip so that no one was at risk of sugar deprivation.
Cooler Days
I love sweater and hoodie weather and got to wear my RMNP hoodie all weekend! High temps were in the low 60s. We lucked out with mostly blue skies, no rain. Of course this was partly just luck, but obviously the odds are better that temps will be cooler in the fall than in the summer.
Additional Notes
The following choices added to our comfort and enjoyment on the trip:
Bring water: We have a 7-gallon BPA-free jug that we use for drinking water when we’re camping and we brought it on this trip too. We all brought our day-to-day insulated water bottles and refilled them from the back of the car as needed. Yellowstone had plenty of outhouses, but water was only available at visitor centers, gift shops and lodges.
Make lunch: We had sandwich fixings in a cooler all weekend. The last thing we wanted to have to do was try to plan our days around dining halls. There’s not many places to buy food in the park and their hours are limited in the fall anyway. I brought chips, fruit and treats too. I always err on the side of more food than less and I never regret it! (P.S. Ice was readily available for Lake Lodge Cabin guests — there’s no mini-fridges in the cabins so this was important.)
Plan ahead for poor cell service: Bring a road atlas, print out some detailed maps and make a note of the hours of attractions/services (dining, especially) because in the park, cell service is unreliable. We could look things up on our phones in our cabin but couldn’t send pictures in our texts. Out in the park during the day, we almost never had cell service. The Lake Lodge claimed to offer wifi but we were never able to access it while we were there using the cafeteria.
Bring binoculars: Yes, bison were often walking right in front of our car on the road. But other times there would be an entire herd off in the distance or something that we hoped was a bear (it wasn’t) and it was nice having binocs to investigate.
Don’t forget your National Parks Passports: My parents got N.P. Passports for my kids and in Yellowstone they have multiple stamp designs at the different visitor centers. You can also get a stamp at Grand Teton National Park in the same trip (depending on which direction you’re coming from). P.S. these aren’t just for kids — my parents have them too.
Bring games: There’s no TV in the cabins, which was a nice break. We brought Yahtzee and two decks of playing cards. The cabin had a good-sized table with chairs and benches that made for a really nice game-playing space after long days of outdoor exploring.
Pack pillows: Obviously depends on how much cargo space you have in your road-tripping conveyance, but the pillows in our Lake Lodge Cabin were definitely past their prime.
BYO hot bevvies: Super optional but we had room to bring my electric kettle and Trader Joe’s instant coffee packets as well as hot chocolate packets for the kids. Alternatively they had a hot water spigot in the cafeteria that would have worked (plus stir sticks!). In the past I’ve brought Starbucks instant coffee and individual packets of shelf-stable half-and-half on trips. There’s no Starbucks in Yellowstone and the hotel/cafeteria/restaurant coffee you’re going to find there isn’t special. Plus it helps get kids out of bed early on a chilly morning if you can ply them with hot sugary drinks. I brought a tiny amount of dish soap and a couple of kitchen towels/washcloth so people could clean out their cups at the end of the day. I’ve also used disposable travel cups like this that you can buy at the grocery store.
A Final Note
There’s so much to see in Yellowstone National Park! I’m a big fan of Rocky Mountain National Park (my “local” NP), but it’s more of a hiking destination with a view of one elk herd at the top of the mountain. At Yellowstone the geothermal features are fascinating and abundant, plus there’s the bison.
Next time we go, if we can stay longer, we’ll decamp from the Yellowstone Lake area to Mammoth for a couple of nights to try to spot bears and wolves in the Lamar Valley.
Finally, as I mentioned before, my husband and I took our kids to Yellowstone when they were really little and we had a good time… but I think this visit was the best. The kids were old (and tall) enough to fully keep up with all of the walking from parking lots to sites (we logged 20,000 steps our first day, 18,000 the second day) and schlep their own water bottles, manage their own sunscreen and layers, etc.. They were both really engaged with everything we saw and took lots of photos, and we all enjoyed chill cabin evenings playing Crazy Rummy or Yahtzee together. There’s something about a national parks trip – whether you’re camping or cabin-ing or hotel-ing – that feels grounded and restorative. I recommend that you try it out if you have a chance!