Planning a Trip to Yellowstone

Planning a Trip to Yellowstone

On September 6^th, 2018, my husband and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. Since I was knee deep in my Master's course until the end of summer semester of 2019 I knew I wouldn't have much time to do a big trip to celebrate like we'd hoped. Plus, March 2018 is surprisingly too late to plan a trip for September 2018. Given the obstacles involved and the need to save money anyway we decided to celebrate our 5th anniversary minimally and plan a bigger trip for our 6th instead. We would be celebrating not just 6 years of marriage but also me finishing my Master's, and buying a home as well.

Our destination? Yellowstone!

Reservations for the 2019 season opened on May 1st, 2018, less than a couple weeks after I started planning. Since I'm such a fastidious planner I decided to blog about planning and our itinerary and then our experience as well with an aim at helping others like us with lower income and living on strict budgets to plan their trips as well.

I have been to Yellowstone once before, in July of 2012, and I loved it. So I was already vaguely familiar with what's there and what's worth seeing and doing. Being a student of librarianship I also did a lot of research too. There is also a lot I didn't see or do that time that I would love to do with my husband this time. I did not go camping or hiking, and I missed some of the geyser basins. This time we plan on doing all that. My husband has never been so this is going to be super fun to share with him.

We aren't rich by a long shot, but we manage our money pretty frugally so we do pretty well. We made a budget which we initially set at $1,400 and later reduced to $1,200. In the end, we spent just shy of $1,000. Whether that's more than you could spend or less, I think this blog can still help you get an idea of what you can do for the money you have if you want to do the same or a similar trip. You CAN go cheaper than the budget we've set. We padded our budget so we could have some luxuries, which you will see in subsequent blogs about things we splurged on. This budget includes how much we will need for gas to drive there and back and all the driving around the park as well, which we initially expected to be around $400 as we had hoped to have a new SUV crossover vehicle by then. We did not, however, and were still driving my economy car when we went so we ended up only spending just over $160 in gas instead. We live about 832 driving miles west of Yellowstone.

This budget did not include things we planned to buy for the trip. For example, our current tent was bent and we might decide to just replace it for the trip. We also need to get bear spray and wanted to get a new camp cooking set and a solar charger for our phones. Things like that we took care of throughout the next year as we had money for it. We also already had about half the money needed available in our savings so we only needed to save about $500 more over the next 16 months or so. One thing I did to make sure that money wasn’t spent was I used it to buy visa gift cards. I got a $100 gift card for each of us for gift shop purchases and the rest was spent on reserving the lodgings. Upon making reservations I quickly discovered that they charge you right away rather than wait for you to check-in for your stay. It was a little upsetting at first but then I realized it meant we could pay for it right away with our savings, lock in that money we already had so it didn’t get spent on something else and make our trip more painful when we got there… or, if we hadn’t had the money, we could have paid for it gradually over the next 16 months till it was paid for. It worked out for us. As we raised the rest of the money I bought more visa gift cards that we could use for gas on the trip and that worked out very well. In the end, we didn’t have to put very much at all on the credit card and it was very satisfying that the bulk of the trip was already paid for by the time we left.

Planning a Route and Making Reservations

I considered several options for lodging before finally settling on a plan. Yellowstone campgrounds are the same basic prices you find at most state campgrounds, at least in the Pacific Northwest where we live. Yellowstone hotels are quite a bit more than we would want to spend per night, but most of them have cabin options for prices comparable to what we would pay for a hotel in our nearest big city (around $120 per night). Most cabins have their own showers and are more comfortable than an air mattress in a tent. Wen and I decided we'd camp for the most part, but stay in cabins 2 times for a little break from camping during our trip.

There are many different ways you can explore the park. Last time I was there I stayed at a hotel in West Yellowstone with my travel mates and we drove into the park every day. You could also do something similar where you stay at one campground and explore from there every day. While the hotel outside the park is cheaper than the ones inside, all the extra driving probably makes up for it. Since we're on a budget and camping most of the time anyway, we decided we would explore the park by following the loop clockwise and staying at campgrounds along the way. The downside to this is we will have to set up and tear down camp every day. However, as our camping is only for eating dinner and sleeping, and there's only two of us, we can make it as simple as possible. 

May 1^st 2018 reservations opened for the 2019 summer season. The website is crazy traffic heavy and it took me several hours of checking back and trying again to finally get the two cabins I wanted reserved. Moving on to campgrounds I ran into another problem. While the website says all reservations now open for 2019, when I tried to reserve campgrounds it only showed the 2018 season. I wasn’t too worried yet because even then Sept for 2018 season still had many open spots. I was able to make campground reservations May 2nd without problems. When we checked into campgrounds during our stays there the campgrounds were always full.

Since we are coming from the Pacific Northwest we will be entering the park through the West Yellowstone entrance.

1. First night we will be camping at Madison Campground
2. Second night we will be staying at a cabin in Mammoth village
3. Third night we will be at Canyon campground
4. Fourth night we will be at Bridge Bay campground
5. Fifth night we will be staying in a frontier cabin at Old Faithful Lodge.
6. Sixth and final night we will be back at Madison campground.

Campgrounds were $29-$35 - small to large tent only sites. Mammoth cabin was $122 with tax, Old Faithful cabin was $113 with tax. These were the cheapest cabins, without inside bathrooms. We used shared bathrooms/showers that were never far away.

Total cost of lodging: $357

Downsides of this plan:

•  Setting up and tearing down every day. This turned out to be more of a pain in practice than we anticipated because we had very wet, rainy weather while there. If I were to do this again I may still camp but I’d park us in one spot.

Upsides of this plan:

• Only scheduling one day per spot makes it easier to get a reservation when you want it.
• You don't use as much gas driving or backtracking.
• You don't waste as much time driving in and out of the park or back and forth on the same stretch.

Lodging Alternatives

You can spend less than us and just camp the whole time. If you prefer to just park at one spot I would recommend the Canyon Campground or Grant Village Campground as a base camp. We didn’t stay at Grant so I can’t speak specifically to that but it is the other campground with laundry facilities, it’s a little cheaper, and a little more central to the hot spots. Canyon is further away from the hot spots, and more expensive ($35 or so) but it also has showers and laundry. It tends not to be as crowded as camping near Old Faithful or Mammoth. There are also lots of trees at most of the campsites in Canyon so if you want to string up a tarp or hammock it’s a lot easier there. The other downside besides being further away from the action is the altitude. This is one of the highest campgrounds in the park so if you’re already having problems you might not sleep well here. It will also be colder here at night than other campgrounds.

If you want a cabin the whole time I would recommend Mammoth. The only difference really between Mammoth and Old Faithful Cabins was the shared showers. Mammoth’s showers were nicer. Both places tend to have a lot of traffic and people.

Another alternative is staying outside the park. A hotel in West Yellowstone is actually about as much as a cabin in Yellowstone, if not more, plus you will be doing a lot of extra driving every day which costs more time and money. Driving in and out of the park every day costs you about 28 extra driving miles each day if you stay in West Yellowstone. Gardiner is closer to the grand loop road than West Yellowstone but it’s also the North entrance and a bit further away from everything. Some people even stay in Cody, which is even further away than these and the road can be a bit scary in the dark.