As we made our way from Portland to Yellowstone, every stop we made was unique in its own way and offered an incredible journey through some of the USA’s most beautiful landscapes. So today, you get to join in on our road trip with this video tour of our road trip to Yellowstone!
Our road trip from Portland to Yellowstone was one to remember and we saw so much of the Western USA along the way! We made an itinerary for this road trip to take in a lot of the scenery along the way and make sure to really see as much as we could. And if you want to take a similar road trip, here’s the route we cook and a complete guide for you to follow on where we went and in what order so it makes sense and you can see as much as possible of the Western USA!
We started off our road trip with a stop overnight in Kennewick, Washington as well as a visit to Palouse Falls!
Stop in the cute little town of Walla Walla for lunch!
Then continue on to Moscow, Idaho for the night.
Start at sunrise at Steptoe Butte out in the Palouse area of Eastern Washington. This area will take your breath away with how beautiful it is!
Then head on to Kalispell, Montana where you’ll stay 2 nights. Stay here in Kalispell!
Spend your day exploring nearby Glacier National Park, a quick drive from Kalispell. Start at the West Entrance of the park and drive the Going to the Sun Road as far as you can. If you go anytime other than the Summer, the road will be closed, but you can drive Highway 2 around the park and enter on the East side as well to get a well rounded experience of Glacier National Park.
Next, head to Bozeman and stopover for the night. Stay here in Bozeman!
Stop here for a night to explore Yellowstone! Head into the park mid-day and explore until the evening on your first day here.
Get up early for sunrise in Yellowstone National Park and explore until mid-day when the tour busses start to make the park really crowded. Then pack up and head to Ketchum, Idaho for the night.
Spend your last day driving back to Portland!
Yellowstone National Park is gigantic and it would take a long time to really see all of it. If you’re like most people visiting Yellowstone, you’ll just touch the surface of what the park has to offer but even in just 2 days you can see a lot of the places that are well known within the park. So if you have just 48 hours, here’s an introductory 2 day itinerary for visiting Yellowstone and what to see in such a short time!
Enter the park as early as you can. We didn’t arrive until mid-day Day 1 so the park was pretty crowded when we arrived, but if you can go earlier, do it.
Immediately on entering the park, you’ll want to pull over for bison and amazing scenery.
Then, head to Biscuit Basin and admire the colorful pools and geysers here.
Next, head to Old Faithful (bypassing Grand Pristmatic) and the Upper Geyser Basin.
On your way back to West Yellowstone, stop at Grand Prismatic Spring. This spot’s parking isn’t great, so go later in the day after the tour busses have gone.
Head back into West Yellowstone for the night.
Start early before the sunrise and head to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
Head toward the Lamar Valley and be on the lookout for wildlife.
Drive the short distance to Yellowstone Lake and the Yellowstone Lake Lodge and have breakfast here.
Head back toward Old Faithful. If you missed it going off the day previously, stop for a while here and watch the famous geyser erupt. Also be sure to walk out to the Morning Glory pool here!
Head back to West Yellowstone after a whirlwind tour of Yellowstone National Park!
Our second day in Yellowstone we wanted to drive further into the park and see more of the remote places where we wouldn’t run into all the tour buses. We decided to start our day at sunrise at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, high above the river, taking in the scenery in that area of the park. We arrived just before sunrise and spent some time at the different lookout points in the area over the canyon, though we ended up at Artist Point which was ultimately our favorite spot to take in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone with a huge waterfall in the distance. Sunrise was a great time to visit here as we had the area almost to ourselves to take in the views as long as we wanted.
*Tip for sunrise anywhere in Yellowstone, wear warm clothes! It was freezing cold!
I had heard a lot about Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone and seen some amazing photos of it before heading to the park. In reality, we actually didn’t get to see the incredible colors or get a great vantage point of this famous spot for a couple reasons. First, it was crazy crowded here when we arrived and with so many people, it really look away the “awe” of the location. Second, it was a really overcast afternoon and the steam was billowing off the surround pools in such huge clouds that we didn’t see much of the pool, along with the overcast sky making the pool have not as bright of colors as it would on a bright blue sky day. All in all, I found it way bigger than I was expecting and hard to photograph. If you want a really bright colored pool that’s smaller and quieter, Morning Glory is the place to be!
To be really honest with you, I don’t really care much for geysers. In truth, I kind of feel like once you’ve seen one geyser, you’ve seen them all and after seeing some in Iceland over the years, Yellowstone’s geysers didn’t really do it for me. However, Old Faithful is such a famous one that we felt like we should at least try to see it while there. The first day when we arrived, it has just gone off and was projected to go off about 90 minutes later. We didn’t really want to sit around and wait for it that day and left saying, too bad. The following day we happened to pass by the exit for Old Faithful again and figured, why not, let’s try it again. We literally parked, got out of the car and it started going off right as we were walking up which was pure luck but really cool to see!
Around Old Faithful there is a lot more to see as well in the Upper Geyser Basin, including the famous Morning Glory Spring and lots of other geysers and hot springs. You’ll walk a bit to get to these, but they are well worth the visit as well!
-The parking lot is huge here and it’s a whole little village but there is a parking trick. Most people circle around and try to park in the huge open lot, but if you go right up to the lodge there is a ton of open parking. We arrived in the late afternoon the first day and had to park super far away, only to walk up to the lodge and see all the open spots. So the next day we pulled up there and parked right away. So drive to the lodge and park there.
-There is seating around Old Faithful so you can wait. Or you can walk around the other geysers and hot springs here.
-Morning Glory Spring is also here at Old Faithful and takes about 2 miles-ish to walk to from Old Faithful itself.
After seeing most of the famous spots in Yellowstone on our recent trip, looking back, the Biscuit Basin area was actually one of my favorites. In contrast to the close-by areas like Grand Prismatic Spring and Old Faithful, Biscuit Basin was just as beautiful in my opinion and way less crowded which made it a lot easier to enjoy. From colorful hot springs to boiling water to small geysers, this area was a pleasant surprise!
Happy 4th of July to all the Americans out there! And what better way to celebrate our national holiday with a post about an American landmark – Yellowstone! So if you’re headed towards this famous US landmark, here’s everything you need to know before visiting Yellowstone!
I wasn’t sure what to expect at Yellowstone National Park, and while Nick had been as a kid, neither of us really had any idea what we’d think of our time there. We had two days in the park and afterwards, I can say that we definitely learned a lot about this famous National Park.
One thing we found on our first day when we went into the park mid-day, it’s a way better plan to go super early and leave around mid-day. The tour buses and vans full of people between 11am and 3pm were a little chaotic and it felt like Disneyland at a lot of the famous spots. We found it was way better to get up early and be in the park for sunrise and stay until around 11am or Noon, then head out of the park when it’s the busiest.
I didn’t quite realize how expansive Yellowstone is and how far each of the famous spots are from each other so expect to be driving a lot.
The signage in the park isn’t great and doesn’t call out everything you might be looking for, so be sure to bring a map. There also isn’t cell service in most of the park, so a paper map is a must!
Bison are everywhere in the park and while the first few times we saw them I got super excited, after awhile, we ended up saying “oh another bison.” We had high hopes of seeing other wildlife and headed to the areas where people suggested we’d see some, but we didn’t find much else. I think to see a lot of the wildlife in the park, a tour specifically for that might be your best bet.
There is not nearly enough parking at the main spots in Yellowstone considering the tour buses take up a ton of it, so people were parked way down the road from the main areas. We found it was faster to park on the road and walk in rather than sit for 10 years in the very crowded parking lots.
At the main spots, be prepared to do quite a bit of walking once you arrive and park. For example, the Morning Glory Pool that’s at the area around Old Faithful is a solid 2-ish mile walk back in there which we weren’t expecting. So where clothes that you’re comfortable walking in.
The weather in Yellowstone can range from really cold to really high in one day. Our days in early June started out really cold, in the high 20’s and got up to the 80’s during the peak of the day, so layers are key to stay warm in the morning and then shed them as it gets hotter. Also wear lots of sunscreen as you’re out walking a lot and the sun can be quite strong.
After 7 full days in the car on our road trip from Portland to Yellowstone and a number of places in between, I feel like I’m a road trip expert. This trip was really different for us than our usual travels and it definitely took some getting used to. And while at the end, we were so ready to be home and out of the car, here are my tips for a long road trip, some we did, some we wish we would have done to make the most out of it!
We were in the car for multiple hours a day so snacks and drinks were an important necessity. The places were were going didn’t always have a lot of restaurants, so we brought stuff that would keep us filled up while out and about. We also brought a cooler with drinks and filled it with ice every day in our hotels so they would stay cold.
Long hours driving can be really wearing, so Nick and I switched off driving along the way. Sometimes he’d drive one day and I’d drive the next, or we’d switch on and off during the same driving day. Whatever you system is, switch off driving so you both get to be behind the wheel.
On this drive, there were a ton of places we didn’t have cell phone service so a paper map came in really handy. We just bought a Western United States map before we left so that we had at least something we could rely on when we didn’t have service. We only had to use it a couple times, but when we needed it, we were sure glad we had it.
Car chargers are a must for a long road trip, without them our phones would have been dead and our directions lost. Be sure to have enough for however many people you have in the car!
This is one thing I wish we would have done better actually. Every night going into new hotels, it got really tiring taking up all our luggage. We had a lot more than usual as we went through a ton of different climates and we were gone for a while, plus Nick had a ton of camera gear and then all our drinks, etc. I wish we could have found a better way to consolidate so you’re not carrying so much into hotels every night.
One thing I wish we would have done better was to add a few more 2-night stays to our itinerary. We did stay two nights in Kalispell outside Glacier National Park which was really nice but I would have liked to have done 2 nights in Bozeman and perhaps 2 nights in Ketchum on the end as well so that it gave us more time to just unpack and relax a bit. So for the future, I would add more 2 night stays in certain destinations.
In this world of constant chaos and heartbreak, of emotional roller coasters and humanity at it’s breaking point each and every day, I constantly find myself wondering if all the generations before us have felt this way too. If people back in Ancient Greece found themselves feeling the same emotions we’re feeling now or if the people that built Machu Picchu felt the same struggles we do now. And as I wonder how humanity sometimes endures through everything and how often it feels unsafe to even leave your house, it always brings me back to the one thing in the world that does bring safety and joy, and that is love.
Love brings a hope to the world that we desperately need. Love has the power to bring people together, to open our hearts and minds and to really deeply know other people in a bond that changes us. The truth is, I get disheartened, I get distracted, I get angry at how the world works but at the end of the day when I think hope might be lost, I look at Nick and the love that we share, as husband and wife, as best friends and I remember how powerful love really is and how much love can actually heal.
The truth is that love is hard, it’s messy and complicated. And then we add marriage and jobs and responsibilities and mortgages and love can become fragile, it takes constant attention, it takes hope. It takes faith.
So as we celebrate Nick’s 31st birthday today, I can’t help but think about how much his love for me and mine for him gives me hope for not only our futures, but the future of our world. Love if we let it, if we put the energy into it and give it the chance, can truly heal the world and bring us together. So as we celebrate love today, may we all celebrate love everyday and have faith that it will change the world.
Happy birthday my love! May the year ahead bring you more happiness and joy than you thought possible!
