The family wants to go to Yellowstone but besides Old Faithful and geysers and hot springs, I have no clue what else is there so I don’t know if we should camp or stay in a lodge and how long to plan to be there. Any ideas?
For geysers, Old Faithful is great if you’re only spending a day in the park, since it goes off so often and so regularly. But there are others that are much, much bigger, with the drawback that they’re not as frequent. If you’re staying for longer, ask at a visitor center when Castle Geyser or one of the other big ones is expected to go off next (it has a period of 10 to 12 hours), then be ready to wait a while for it to go off once you get there.
There’s also wildlife to see. Most times of the year, you’re almost guaranteed to see bison, elk, mule and/or whitetail deer, bighorn sheep, and coyotes, and there’s a good chance of seeing black or brown bears, gray wolves, eagles, moose, or other critters. Just remember that all of the wildlife can be dangerous, even (especially, actually) the herbivores, and don’t try to approach too closely or get them angry.
I’m not a big fan of fishing, personally, but I’m told that the fishing in Yellowstone Lake is very good, if that’s something you’d want to spend time on.
Of course, there’s plenty of hiking, in all sorts of different terrain. You might want to set aside a day to hike to the top of Mt. Washburn.
If you’re a city boy, you’ve probably never seen anything like the night skies from Yellowstone. Between the elevation and the lack of light pollution, the view is breathtaking. We’re also coming up on solar maximum, so if you’re lucky, you might see the aurora. It’s usually pretty clear, but even if it rains, that’s OK, since you can get some absolutely amazing rainbows, too.
And finally, my personal favorite part of the park is the canyon. It’s smaller than the Grand Canyon, of course, but in my opinion, it’s far more impressive. Also in the canyon are two major waterfalls.
The canyon is great the south side of the canyon has a nice hike. The north side has a great view of the big falls if you take a pretty long stair down into the canyon. If you like hiking the Lamar valley is great because a half mile out of the parking lot you feel that you are alone.
If you go in late May you can see all the baby animals. We got stuck in a traffic jam as buffalo were crossing the roadand right in front of us a baby decided it was hungry so we saw a baby buffalo nursing.
When you’re in the Canyon area, don’t limit yourself to the trails and overlooks on the north side of the river. Uncle Tom’s Trail on the other side leads to an awesome view and provides a decent workout at the same time.
Sheepeater Cliff is pretty neat; it’s worth a short drive off the main road.
The northeastern entrance to the park is via Beartooth Highway, one of the most scenic mountain drives in America. The eastern entrance is near Cody, WY, home to the terrific Buffalo Bill Historic Center.
Yellowstone is huge (almost 3,500 square miles, which is about 2-1/2 times the size of the state of Rhode Island). I go almost every year, and just never run out of things to do.
Whether you stay in a lodge or camp is personal preference. We’ve done both, and enjoyed both. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in a tent in an area that has grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, mountain lions, wolverines, and coyotes; but the big predators rarely hurt people. In fact, more people are killed or injured by moose and bison than all the big predators combined.
Take time to hike. Less than 2% of visitors to the park get more than a hundred yards off of the pavement and/or boardwalk. Yellowstone is filled with well-maintained hiking trails, and even on a crowded day, you can be virtually alone just by walking for a half-hour. And, as Chronos said, get outside after dark and look at the sky!
There are some nice places to eat, you can rent canoes in the lake, there’s good fishing, ranger-led hikes, horseback riding, campfire talks, gift shops, and a whole lot more.
Be prepared for long driving times. All it takes is one “buffalo jam” with bison all over the road and you’re delayed for two hours.
And while you’re at it, (warning: shameless self-promotion ahead) pick up a copy of one of my children’s books. They’re in every gift shop and bookstore in the park.
Traffic is a bitch in Yellowstone. No way around it. Either they’re working on the road or, as Wombat noted, there’s a wildlife traffic jam. Twenty people taking pictures of a mangy old bison will gum up the works for a long time. But it’s really worth seeing. If you stay inside the park at the lodge or in a campground, it will make getting to some things much easier, but in summer it’s tough to get a reservation.
You can often find spots in private campgrounds outside the park. I’d caution you, though, to look at actual drive times rather than map distances. We stayed once at a beautiful campground on a lake just outside of the town of West Yellowstone. On a map, we were practically in the park. In reality, we spent an extra 2-3 hours a day just driving to get wherever we wanted to be.
It’s worth arranging your trip around getting reservations!
My understanding is that it is a fun place with talking bears and kind but frustrated rangers but watch your pic-a-nic basket or it’ll be stolen
Whoops wrong place 
Plus, if you get hopelessly lost in the vast wilderness, there’s a chance that you will be rescued by Indiana Jones, hisownself. Or maybe Han Solo.
For the past decade, my mom has gone to Yellowstone almost every year. She stays for several months and she always goes back home with tons of new Yellowstone stories to tell. She’s driven to the top of a very tall, very terrifying mountain just to get a bar on her cellphone.
On the advice of a Ranger, she’s driven through herds of bison, which parted around her; once, she had to stop in the middle of the herd while two of the enormous creatures made sweet, sweet love within inches of her car.
During one of those tourist traffic jams, she saw a little Japanese woman tossed through the air by one of the bison when she tried to pose for a picture with it.
She goes to the Playmill Theater in West Yellowstone at least twice a year.
I went through Yellowstone twice in mid-winter (not by choice – nearby business trip, with an extra day in the flight schedule). With nothing better to due, we drove down & through Yellowstone.
It was surprisingly interesting. Some of the roads were closed by snow, and it seemed very empty – very little traffic. Whenever we saw animals (which was quite frequent), we stopped to watch, and no traffic jams resulted. Usually, everybody else stopped to watch too.
The scenery was still there, and still beautiful when show-covered. The waterfalls were still there, and the geysers still went off on schedule, and the hot mud ponds were even more striking with snowbanks all around them.
And with no crowds, the service in restaurants, lodges, & souvenir shops was great. So lots to see in Yellowstone, even in the mid-winter off season.
I went in September of '08, and while a few of the restaurants and such were starting to close down for the season, I had absolutely zero traffic problems. I think once I had to sit for 10 minutes or so while a buffalo herd meandered cross the road. I drove every major road in the park.
There is a BBC documentary series called “Yellowstone” that has some truly tremendous footage and will help you understand why Yellowstone is remarkable. It’s on Netflix streaming, if you have access to that.
Lots of good advice here; I would just add that if you have time, visit nearby Grand Teton National Park. It’s just a few miles south of Yellowstone.
The last time we went, it was the week before Memorial Day so the “summer season” hadn’t officially started yet. We still had to get a reservation for a cabin a few months ahead of time, though, and much of the northern half the park was closed because there was still quite a bit of of snow on the ground. We did manage to get to the canyon, though, which was awesome.
Also, if you can’t find enough in Yellowstone to keep you busy, Grand Teton National Park is right next door and also worth checking out.
Stay at the Days Inn in West Yellowstone, especially if you can get a AAA discount. Very affordable, with an indoor pool and slides that the kids will love. It puts you just a few blocks from the gate and maybe 20 minutes from the roads that take you around the park. And they have a good free breakfast at the attached cafe.
I would recommend allotting 1 day to each quadrant of the park (NE, NW, SE, SW). This is enough time to get out and do most of the hiking except for some of the longest routes. My wife and I had 3 days and really could have used one more. I’d love to give myself a whole week some day, but I’d do Grand Tetons as well.
Whatever you do, do not miss Yellowstone Canyon or the Norris Geyser Basin.
Plan to do Old Faithful at lunch - you can let the kids reserve good seats while you buy food, and then sit and wait while you eat. Since you may have to wait thirty minutes to an hour, you’ll be making good use of your time that way.
In terms of season, we did it just before Memorial Day. Most of the snow had melted and we beat the crowds. The weather was also more moderate. The only drawback was that not all of the lodges or restaurants were open yet, but we weren’t there to see them.
Hitting Old Faithful at lunchtime also means that you can choose to see the geyser and then eat, or eat and then see the geyser, depending on which way the timing works out. The timing isn’t completely exact, but if the sign says that the next eruption is estimated in 70 minutes, you might as well get a seat at a table and eat inside.
I haven’t been to Yellowstone in over 20 years but I enjoyed it very much. I also strongly recommend the Grand Tetons. Being from northern Indiana (aka Flatsville), I was simply overwhelmed by the scenery. The canyons and geysers in Yellowstone, the mountains of the Grand Tetons and the majestic beauty of the Rockies. Enjoy!
The webcam I linked to above usually has a pretty good eruption time prediction, so if you’re in WiFi or 3G space, you can plan before hitting the parking lot.
That’s a heckuva nice poop book you wrote there Gary!
Having noticed some odd droppings near Norris, it was nice to find your book at Mammoth hot springs. Who knew elk poop could look so odd?
I went to Yellowstone last summer for the first time in my near 50 years. We also hit the Black Hills of South Dakota (with Mount Rushmore) on the same trip, plus Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. We made reservations just one month in advance because we had planned to go to the Florida Gulf coast, but the oil spill made us change our plans.
At Yellowstone, we ended up staying at the Kelly Inn in West Yellowstone, which was just fine. It’s not the same as an in-park lodge I’m sure, but worked well anyway. You’re going to be doing a lot of driving when you visit there - it’s not like you would stay in one of the lodges and just hike to the things you want to see. It’s a very big place. Be prepared for lots of driving, and traffic jams in the typical tourist summer season.
To add to the things others here have said, we enjoyed swimming in the river where one of the hot springs dumps into it. The one we did was up close to the North entrance to the park, North of the Mammoth Hot Springs area. The river water is freezing cold, and the hot springs water is boiling hot, so you have to find the exact spot to be comfortable. Literally, six inches to your left would be way too hot and six inches farther to your right would be way too cold.
There’s also another hot-springs swimming hole at Firehole Canyon, closer to the West entrance.