Our Impressions of West Yellowstone

Geographically West Yellowstone is a very small town located at the southwestern border of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. There is a sign in town that says, “West Yellowstone, a town of 1,200 serving 12,000 a day.” We believe it. West Yellowstone is a town where the bulk of the businesses are based on tourism, restaurants, motels, campgrounds and gift shops.

It is easy to get around town, and the people seem very friendly.

Beyond the two national parks (Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons) and the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center, there really isn’t much to see or do in the area. But that is okay! We chose the West Yellowstone entrance for its proximity to Bozeman and scenic drive south on MT-191.

After visiting the crazy busy, overwhelming crowded Grand Canyon and Zion national parks we feared Yellowstone and Grand Tetons would be the same. Admittedly, Yellowstone was busy. Some places are busier than others, for example, Old Faithful. However, there were still places you could sit and watch wildlife or the rivers running without other people around. This was NEVER the case in the Grand Canyon and Zion.

Yellowstone National Park was amazing, and Grand Teton National Park was majestic.

Plan at least a week to explore the area. Please don’t be “those people” who spend ½ day in each park and say they have seen Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons! We were there for a week and we still didn’t see everything there was to see!

Speaking of “those people”, we saw people doing the most dangerous things! We saw a bison that was clearly injured lying down near a walkway to a geyser. The park rangers were aware of the bison’s condition. There were other ways to see the geysers than walking by the injured bison! The standard is to stay 25 yards away from any bison, but this one was injured, and it is mating season. All the more reason to stay well away from this big male bison! We saw people going up within 6 ft of the bison to take pictures!!!! We even saw people laying down on the boardwalk 2 feet from the bison to take selfies!! On Instagram there is a designated place to watch these people: touronsofYellowstone. Tourons is the created word to describe tourists (“tour”) who are identified by their mortifying behaviors (“morons”). We saw a lot of tourons in Yellowstone.

Attractions

One of the best things we did in this area was to schedule a tour of both national parks. We were able to see the highlights of both parks and know where we wanted to spend more time when we were on our own. There are many tour companies to choose from, but we chose Yellowstone Safari Tours. Scott was our tour guide for both days, one day in Yellowstone and the other day in Grand Teton. He was extremely knowledgeable about both areas, and we would highly recommend both Yellowstone Safari Tours and Scott.

On our tour we were able to see wildlife including several herds of bison, a black bear, a coyote, a herd of elk, a family of deer, and a marmot. We also saw many birds including dippers and American kestrels!

The following are some of the highlights we saw while in the national parks. It isn’t an exhaustive list. To make this blog a reasonable length, we have just listed the places. For more information, please go to the Yellowstone and Grand Teton websites. If you only have a couple of days, you shouldn’t miss these sights.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park is known as the first national park in the country. It sprawls across more than 3,471 square miles, or 2,221,766 acres. https://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm

• West Thumb Geyser Basin
• Black Pool and Abyss Pool Geysers
• Continental Divide and Isa Lake: Isa Lake is the only lake in the country that drains both to the Pacific and to the Gulf of Mexico!
• Firehole Falls
• Red Spouter: this is the newest geyser in the park! It was formed after the 1959 earthquake.
• Old Faithful
• Rainbow Pool: this geyser is amazing!
• Cliff Geyser
• Dragons Mouth Spring: this was my favorite geyser; it reminded me of Thunder Hole at Acadia National Park in Maine.
• Mud Volcano: very different from the geysers!
• Upper Falls
• Lower Falls
• Beryl Spring: such a beautiful blue!
• Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

Grand Teton National Park

Grand Teton National Park spans 485 square miles or 310,000 acres. https://www.nps.gov/grte/index.htm

• T.A. Mouton Barn: this is the famous barn in a field that has a roof line that mimics the shape of the Tetons behind it.
• Oxbow Bend Turnout: if you have ever seen a picture of the Tetons reflecting on the Snake River, this is the location. Amazing.

Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center. Seeing wild animals caged and confined sometimes makes us sad. However, the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center is different. According to material at the Center, “Bears in the lower 48 states rarely die of disease or natural causes. They are usually killed by people–either directly or indirectly when people’s activities and developments disrupt or destroy their habitat.” There is one grizzly at the center that wandered into a neighboring town eight times, always in search of easily accessible food. He would be relocated and would always make it back “home”. The grizzly’s only two futures were: being killed or brought to the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center. It is the same story for the rest of the grizzlies, the wolves, the birds and the otters.

Besides being a safe home for the grizzlies and wolves, there is a lot of education for the human population. For example, I am clear about not leaving food and garbage around to attract bears, but I hadn’t really thought of a bird feeder as being something that would attract bears.

The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center is also the only place in the country that does testing for bear-resistant containers. They will take a cooler or garbage can, put food in the container, seal it according to the manufacturer instructions and place it in the bear enclosure. If a bear has not been able to open the container (cooler or garbage can) for 45 minutes, it is considered “bear resistant”. According to the museum, given enough time, a bear can get into anything!

This Discovery Center is well worth the stop. And your donation goes to support the wildlife habitat.

Downtown West Yellowstone

Downtown West Yellowstone is full of gift shops and restaurants. Many of the motels and campgrounds are within walking distance of the downtown area, so you will see people meandering down the sidewalks and crossing streets all during the day and early evening.

Our favorite thing? West Yellowstone encourages people coming downtown by NOT having parking meters. Good job, West Yellowstone!

Restaurants

Hank’s Chop Shop is one of the few restaurants in town that is open year-round. It is a traditional casual dining, family-style restaurant with standard fare like hamburgers.

The Slippery Otter Pub is conveniently located in the center of downtown. On street parking is plentiful. It is another traditional casual dining, family-style restaurant with pub food.

Home Base: The Campground

For us, a campground is not our destination. Our RV is self-contained. Except for water, electric and sewer rarely do we use campground services or amenities. We are explorers, not campground reviewers!

We stayed on site 110 at the Yellowstone Park KOA Holiday Campground in West Yellowstone. Be aware there is another KOA, a KOA Journey, also in West Yellowstone, also on the same road as the Holiday KOA, only about 1.5 miles further from the national park headquarters.

30 and 50 amp service were available. The campground was clean and well maintained. The staff was friendly. Our full hook up (water-sewer-electric) site was on level gravel, though we did have a large angle down in the front of our site. It was fine for the Jeep, precarious for the RV departing the site. Our pull through site was long enough for both the RV and the Jeep to be off the road. There was good cell phone coverage (Verizon) and there was a good open southern sky for our satellite. However, this would not be true for many sites in the campground.

Fun Facts

West Yellowstone holds the record low of any community in the lower 48 states at −66° F.

Because of its proximity to Yellowstone National Park, the town receives more than half of its annual business from Chinese tourists. To cater to these tourists, the town has six Chinese restaurants and most commercial signage is in English, Spanish and Mandarin.

Summary

We were glad we decided to enter Yellowstone National Park in West Yellowstone. If, or when we return to Yellowstone National Park, we would probably stay at the same park entrance! What is another thing we would do again? Take a private tour with Yellowstone Safari Tours, especially if Scott was our guide! It was well worth the money.

Since beginning our full-time journey to discover the country, we have found something to appreciate in every city and town we have passed through. We hope you enjoy reading about them as much as we have enjoyed discovering them!

Your partners in travel,
Kathryn and Dave
RVing Nomads

It’s a lifestyle

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• We have visited each town, attraction and restaurant we are writing about. • No person, business or attraction has paid us for an endorsement. • AI has not been used to write any of the content of this blog. • All the photos in this blog were taken by Dave or Kathryn Harrington.