campgrounds | Yellowstone Treasures

Nov

Where to stay in Yellowstone Park in 2023

Tags: campgrounds, lodgings, Mammoth, Old Faithful, reservations, snowcoaches

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This fox was spotted tracking a snowshoe hare from atop the Roosevelt Arch at the North Entrance.

Are you planning a trip to Yellowstone in 2023? Where will you stay? Besides the regular seasonal changes to what’s open in the park, lots of flood recovery projects have been going on. On October 30 the road between the North Entrance at Gardiner, Montana, and Mammoth Hot Springs finally reopened! This was the result of a four-month project to turn the 1880s one-lane wagon road into a two-lane, four-mile paved road that can even handle RVs and trailers (as long as they don’t exceed 25 miles per hour on the steep curves!).

Despite best efforts to fix up a wastewater situation stemming from the June 2022 floods, the park concessionaire Xanterra announced that Mammoth Hotel lodging and dining will not open this winter, though they have a ski shop, tours, take-out food, and hot drinks for the winter. Perhaps you can arrange accommodations in the town of Gardiner outside the North Entrance instead. Within the park, Old Faithful Snow Lodge is the best place to stay from December 15, when roads open to oversnow travel by snowmobile and snowcoach, to early March, when the roads close for preparing for the spring opening of the park. Always be sure to check the Park Roads page before you go.

Opening up for summer

The first roads are due to open to wheeled traffic on April 21, weather permitting, which is a bit later than some recent years. The first hotel rooms and cabins to open will be at Mammoth on April 28, Old Faithful Inn on May 5, and then Lake Hotel and Canyon Lodges on May 12. These dates are quite a bit earlier than last year, but of course they are subject to change due to weather. Most of the restaurants and cafeterias in the park open for either take-out or dining in once the lodging opens. See the Stay and Dine tabs on Xanterra’s YellowstoneNationalParkLodges.com website for more.

Where to camp

Remember it’s not allowed to camp in your car or by the road in this national park. Fishing Bridge RV Park’s extensive renovation is complete, with new and larger sites, more showers and laundry facilities, and other improvements. Here are the opening dates or first available dates for the campgrounds you can reserve through Xanterra:

Madison Campground – May 5
Fishing Bridge RV Park – May 12
Canyon Campground – sold out through the end of May
Bridge Bay Campground – May 26
Grant Village Campground – sold out through June 8

Campgrounds run by the National Park Service, such as Tower Fall Campground, are reservable, but reservations for summer 2023 are not yet open on Recreation.gov. The flooding in June 2022 caused infrastructure damage to the following campgrounds, which will remain closed until further notice: Indian Creek, Mammoth, Pebble Creek, and Slough Creek.

So you can see that planning for your trip is both necessary and more complicated than it used to be. Time to get started!

Photo credit: Yellowstone Forever, January 22, 2017

Mar

Places to stay in the park in 2021

Categories: Trip planning, Wildlife

Tags: campgrounds, lodgings, Mammoth, Old Faithful, reservations

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Old Faithful Inn interior, showing the great fireplace and balconies

Are you planning a trip to Yellowstone this spring or summer? The National Park Service and the park concessionaire Xanterra have made a few announcements lately. Changes afoot this spring and summer include delays in the opening dates for the hotel rooms and cabins, campgrounds that will be closed the entire season, and newly reservable campsites. Of course, the roads have not been plowed for wheeled vehicles yet. The first ones are due to open April 16, weather permitting. Always be sure to check the Park Roads page before you go.

Various lodges and cabins will open during May, but Old Faithful Inn rooms do not open until June 4, Grant Village lodge rooms not until June 18. Most of the restaurants and cafeterias in the park will still be limited to take-out rather than dining in. The gift shops will open on the same schedule as the lodging. See Xanterra’s update page on YellowstoneNationalParkLodges.com for more.

Camping

Due to construction, three campgrounds will remain closed for all of 2021: Norris, Tower Fall, and Fishing Bridge RV Park. Here are the opening dates for the four campgrounds you can reserve through Xanterra:

Madison Campground – May 14
Canyon Campground – May 21
Bridge Bay Campground – June 11
Grant Village Campground – June 18

Bighorn rams at Slough Creek (click to enlarge)

In addition, at three of the seven campgrounds that NPS operates you will be able to make reservations up to six months in advance via Recreation.gov. These three are Mammoth, Slough Creek in the wildlife-rich Lamar Valley, and Pebble Creek Campground (sites 1-16) near the Northeast Entrance. Sites can be reserved starting on March 24, 2021. So our guidebook is wrong in saying the sites are nonreservable. This idea is not popular, since many working people do not have the luxury to plan that far in advance. But the advantage from the park service’s perspective is that perhaps fewer people will arrive unprepared with a place to spend the night.

Photo credits: Old Faithful Inn fireplace from Bat’s Alley, NPS photo; Bighorn rams at Slough Creek, NPS photo taken by Peggy Olliff in February 2015, which you can find on page 204 of Yellowstone Treasures, updated sixth edition.

Mar

Yellowstone is closed until further notice

Categories: News, Trip planning

Tags: campgrounds, lodgings, national parks, park entrances, roads, visitors

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News Release: Effective immediately, @YellowstoneNPS and @GrandTetonNPS are closed to all park visitors until further notice. There will be no visitor access permitted to either park. #Covid19 #CoronaVirus
Details at: https://t.co/4YLJxQqvFw pic.twitter.com/yUnXTra8vP
— YellowstoneNPS (@YellowstoneNPS) March 24, 2020

Were you, as we were, planning a trip to the park this summer? The COVID-19 outbreak means we all need to practice social (physical) distancing, which now means a need to cancel those travel plans. Last week, concessionaire Xanterra announced they are suspending their operations (lodging, campgrounds, dining, and tours) through May 21 (see https://www.yellowstonenationalparklodges.com/coronavirus/). Yesterday, the National Park Service made the unusual but prudent decision in tandem with gateway county health departments that they have to follow suit. NPS closed both Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park to visitors until further notice. To quote from the news release: “There will be no visitor access permitted to either park. State highways and/or roads that transcend park/state boundaries and facilities that support life safety and commerce will remain open.” So one thing that is not clear at the moment is what happens to travel on the Northern Range road between Gardiner and Silver Gate. Another question no one can answer yet is, When will the parks be able to reopen?

Please stay tuned to this website, because we will soon have news about the guidebook and a short-term sale. On Friday we announced the publication date for the sixth edition of Yellowstone Treasures on our Media Kit. For now, the best advice is stay home, stay healthy!

Feb

Encourage teens to join the Youth Conservation Corps

Categories: News

Tags: campgrounds, kids, national parks, summer, trails

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Yellowstone youth conservation corps members

Youth Conservation Corps members at Inspiration Point, Yellowstone National Park (NPS photo, circa 2012)

The National Park Service is announcing that the deadline to apply for one of the two month-long sessions at Yellowstone this summer is rapidly approaching: March 1, 2018. This will be the 29th straight year that the Youth Conservation Corps is offered in Yellowstone National Park. Sixty young people between the ages of 15 and 18 can participate in this program, which has educational, recreational, and work aspects. Teens help NPS staff with trail and campground restoration, resource management, visitor support, maintenance, and more. “Applicants should possess a positive attitude, a willingness and ability to work in a physically active outdoor program, and get along well with others,” according to the press release. What a great opportunity! For more information and to obtain the application, see the YCC page on the official Yellowstone National Park website.

Aug

Road Closure in Fall 2017

Categories: News, Trip planning

Tags: campgrounds, hiking, roads

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Map from the guidebook’s Mammoth to Norris road log

In the most recent edition of Yellowstone Treasures you’ll find this note: “Construction on the Norris to Mammoth road is scheduled to continue through 2018.” Here is the latest report on the construction.

Since June 11, the Norris to Mammoth road has been closed nightly from 10 pm to 7 am (excluding Saturday nights). The word is to expect 30-minute delays in the daytime when driving between Roaring Mountain (the magenta dot east of the road on this map) and the Indian Creek Campground (the tent icon down a short side road, almost opposite the Sheepeater Cliff picnic area). According to trip reports on the Facebook group Yellowstone Up Close and Personal, the daytime delays are usually not as long as 30 minutes.

The important news is that from September 10 (10 pm) to October 6 (7 am), this section of road will be closed to all traffic (day and night). During the closures, people will be able to detour over Dunraven Pass (between Tower Fall and Canyon).

Norris and Indian Creek Campgrounds, at opposite ends of the road segment, are remaining open during the season. During the road closure you will not be able to see Apollinaris Spring, nor Obsidian Cliff, nor will you be able to hike the Mount Holmes Trail. You can still hike the Bunsen Peak Trail from the north.

Remember to check the National Park Service’s Park Roads page before you head out.

CREDIT: Linton Brown revised this map for Yellowstone Treasures, Updated Fifth Edition (2017). You can find it on page 277.

Mar

This Is When You Really Need “Yellowstone Treasures”

Categories: Trip planning

Tags: campgrounds, guidebooks, lodgings, road logs, summer

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Mud Volcano area in winter. As of today Yellowstone is still covered in snow; most travel by car starts April 21, 2017.

March—while you may still be wishing for spring—is a great month to plan a summer or fall trip to Yellowstone. Here are some ways that Yellowstone Treasures can help you plan, especially if you haven’t been to the park before.

First, if your time is going to be limited to two or three days, in the book’s introduction (pages 17 and 18) there’s a list of Best Sights. An enthusiastic Amazon.com customer last June wrote: “Ms. Chapple’s rating of one star for those sights that were ‘worth taking the time for,’ or two stars for those you ‘must see’ really helped us plan our two day stay. . . .” (But—if at all possible—I highly recommend that you stay a week or even more. You won’t regret it.)

Yellowstone has become so popular—with over 4.2 million visitors last year—that almost all the in-park cabin and hotel rooms are already booked. I have to blame this mostly on the large bus tours that book blocks of rooms a year or more ahead, knowing they can fill up their tours with no trouble. This leaves us individuals and families who plan later in the year with little recourse but to book rooms in gateway places like West Yellowstone, Moran, Cody, Cooke City, and Gardiner. You can, of course, book a space in campgrounds or in the only RV camping spot, if you are so inclined.

Fortunately, the gateway towns have lots of accommodations. You will find phone numbers and email addresses for the chambers of commerce of all the gateway towns in the back of YT, as well as how to contact the park concessionnaire, Xanterra (or Yellowstone Park Lodges). Also, see our Yellowstone Links for the chamber of commerce websites in those places. Online resources such as Booking.com can be a great help with finding rooms outside the park.

A chapter near the beginning of Yellowstone Treasures tells you all about the five different entrances to the park and what you’ll see on their approach roads. The bulk of the book (pages 38 to 301) is what you’ll use before you go, while you’re there, and for reference when you return home. It’s full of detailed maps made and kept up-to-date by my incomparable mapmaker, Linton A. Brown. Here is one from page 200 of the guidebook.
Yellowstone Treasures map

Happy planning!

Photo credit: Janet Chapple, 2012.

Jun

Visiting Yellowstone in October

Categories: Trip planning

Tags: cabins, campgrounds, roads, visitors, winter

Comments: 1

Someone on the website Quora just asked about visiting Yellowstone in October, so here’s what I came up with while surfing the National Park Service website for Yellowstone:

Facilities open in October are:
Lake Hotel and Cabins to Oct. 9
Mammoth Hotel and Cabins to Oct. 10
Old Faithful: Snow Lodge and Cabins to Oct. 16; Inn to Oct. 9; Lodge and Cabins to Oct. 5

All campgrounds close in September, except the one at Mammoth Hot Springs, which is open all year.
Almost all roads are open until November 7; Dunraven Pass and Beartooth Pass close on October 11.

Since the weather always turns cold and snowy more and more during October, visitors need to be prepared to dress warmly and could need snow tires in some areas. All thermal areas and most wildlife can be seen (bears are just beginning to think about hibernating), but visitor center hours are limited, some dining facilities are closed, and ranger programs have already ceased in September.

Apr

Yellowstone Park is opening up again!

Categories: News, Trip planning

Tags: campgrounds, lodgings, Mammoth, Old Faithful, roads

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Roosevelt Cabins to open June 5, 2015

Yellowstone’s roads and facilities are about to open to cars for the season. First will be the roads to Old Faithful from Mammoth and West Yellowstone and the Norris to Canyon road, all on April 17, 2015. Gradually the other roads will be ready: on May first you can drive from the East Entrance to Lake and Canyon and last (this year) will be Craig Pass between Old Faithful and West Thumb, where a new bridge is being built at Isa Lake.

The facilities open gradually, too, beginning with Old Faithful Snow Lodge and Mammoth Hotel on May first. The last to open will be Roosevelt Cabins on June 5. Campgrounds also open gradually, although the Mammoth Campground is open all year. You can find all the details on this page: “Opening & Closing Dates of Facilities.”

Credit: NPS Photo by David Restivo

Jul

Short hikes

Categories: Trip planning

Tags: campgrounds, Canyon, hiking, kids

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This is a great time of year to go hiking. Some delightful short hikes can be taken by going partway on a long backcountry trail. For example, start the Seven-Mile Hole Trail along Yellowstone Canyon’s north rim or head toward Point Sublime on the south rim. If you are interested in this one, take a look at the Canyon Area map.

Another idea is to start the Pebble Creek Trail. Park at the upstream end of Pebble Creek Campground (9.7 miles after the Northeast Entrance). Layers and layers of limestone about 350 million years old are exposed in cliffs in a lovely canyon. Look closely at the rock to see bits of tiny marine organisms.

For a fantastic view of Yellowstone Lake and a trail with some interesting small hydrothermal features and great wildflowers, take the Yellowstone Lake Overlook Trail south from West Thumb Geyser Basin.

walks list in Yellowstone Treasures You can certainly find good sources for longer hikes, but author Janet Chapple believes there are lots of older people and also young families who want to do less ambitious walking and would like to know where the best hikes for them are. So she has put together a chart of “56 Recommended Short Walks in Yellowstone” starting on page 366. See the “How to Find Great Hikes in Yellowstone” nugget for more about that list and other possible hikes to choose among.

—Editor Beth Chapple

Jul

What you can find in the guidebook

Categories: Trip planning

Tags: campgrounds, guidebooks, hiking, lodgings, trails

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Author Janet Chapple poses among wildflowers at the start of the Mount Washburn trail.

Are you planning your first big trip to Yellowstone National Park? With Yellowstone Treasures you can figure out the distances between various gateway towns and parts of the park, what time of year is the best time for you to visit, and where you should plan to stay. The book tells you all about the campgrounds and lodgings in the park, plus listing resources for exploring the national forest campgrounds and town motels on all sides of the park. There are also lists of what to see, recommended hikes, and helpful maps, all of which Janet describes in “The Features of Yellowstone Treasures.”

Once you are there, the road log format lets you figure out what you will come to just ahead—a picnic area, a hot spring, the chance to see bison, a waterfall—there are so many possibilities! Here’s an excerpt of the road log from the East Entrance to Fishing Bridge Junction. You get details about how strenuous a hike is, where to park, which mountains you can see at a particular viewpoint, and even how many picnic tables there are. Janet checked out every spot in the road guide and hiked on every trail she recommends, sometimes multiple times.

You may wonder, do I need to travel by car to use Yellowstone Treasures? Janet feels that even people who go through the park by bus would enjoy a copy of her book, both while in the park and afterward. Though they would not benefit from the mileage indications between points of interest, every other facet of the book should be useful, including maps, pictures, and planning aids.

—Editor Beth Chapple

All posts tagged campgrounds

Opening up for summer

Where to camp

Camping