Yellowstone National Park Travel Forum

Need help on create an trip iternary for the next weekend (4/20-23). Will drive from Salt Lake City. My girl's wish is to visit Yellowstone. I just try to make it happen. Any suggestion & advise are welcome and appreciated.

What is the ideal travel route, and stay place for the night?
Any recommended scenary points along the way?

The good thing is we don't set any high expectations, just a spring field trip for 2 newly weds.

You have a lot of driving for 4 days from Salt Lake city. Its about 300 miles from the Wyoming state border to Yellowstone and thats without driving up from Salt Lake city.

Places to stay on the way - Jackson, and from there you can drive via the Tetons up to Yellowstone. You can stay in the park but its expensive. You could stay in West Yellowsone just outside the apark to the west.(altho it is closed in winter so I guess it depends how much snow is still there) Its about an hours drive form the main park attracions.

Yor really need at least 2 days to do all the sights in yellowstone as there is quite a distance between things.

check out:

http://www.nationalparkreservations.com/
for accomodation within the park.
and
http://www.nps.gov/yell/
for details of road conditions etc.

Being this late you will have a hard time finding a place in the park or at West Yellowstone. I have driven the route twice on my motorcycle and here is what I would do.

Go SLC to Idaho Falls or Rexburg. There are plenty of places there but you still might want to try a reservation. Then I would go in the west gate and make a loop down to Old Faithful over along the north shore of Yellowstone Lake, up to Canyon Village and out the north gate to Gardiner, MT. Next day come back in the north gate and go back toward Old Faithful and out the south gate toward Grand Teton.

I have not stayed anyplace along this route back to SLC so I can't help you on places to stay.

It will be a long drive for four days, but well worth it. The park is awsome.

Too early to stay at Old faithful Inn, too bad as it would be very romantic honeymoon spot. But otherwise early enough that you should be fine on anywhere that it is open, we just camped across washington and oregon and nothing really opens up for at least another month. Go where the roads are open in yellowstone and enjoy, finding a place in west yellowstone should not be hard. and congratulations!

A honeymoon to Yellowstone is a great idea. And you are lucky...they will have most of the roads open beginning 20 April so you will be able to drive in. You will need to go in and out West Yellowstone as the road to the South entrance and the Tetons will not be open till May.
http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/hours.htm

So head north from SLC on I-15 to Idaho Falls, then exit to Hwy 20 to Rexburg/West Yellowstone. It is about a 5 hours drive.

All in-park lodging will be closed so you will need to stay in West Yellowstone http://www.westyellowstonechamber.com/ You could stay there the whole time or perhaps spend one night in Gardiner MT http://www.gardinerchamber.com/

Best plan is to head from W Yellowstone to Old Faithful and see the geyser, and get your bearings. Then head back to Norris Geyser and Mammoth areas. You should also take the time to drive over to Canyon to see the waterfalls there. You will have to backtrack some but you should be able to see most everything open in two days.

I hope it is a memorable experience. .... You will probably not have any trouble with crowds. But plan on cold weather.