We are starting to plan our next trip- Yellowstone and the surrounding areas before school lets out, but after the park opens up more. We'll be driving there with a 3 year old and a 1 year old and renting through VRBO. We are big hikers, but somewhat limited with backpacking kids. Also big microbrew and food fans, so if anyone has recommendations from personal experience, I'd love to hear them!
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No recs but gosh I'm jealous! That's a dream trip of ours!!
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What surroundings areas?
In the park: definitely do a ranger led hike around the Old Faithful area. It's cheesy, but they will time it so you hit the geysers better than on your own.
The Yellowstone Lake Lodge is supposed to have a great restaurant.
There are hot springs you can swim at in the Montana part, near Mammoth.
Surrounding areas:
Chico Hot Springs is a neat place to check out. It has a big warm pool, and an incredible restaurant. Katy Perry and John Mayer used to vacation there.
Beers to try:
I'm not sure how far some of these distribute, but this is my list of must try Montana beers:
Kettlehouse Cold Smoke (one of the best beers ever)
Big Sky Summer Honey (since you will be there in the summer)
Blackfoot IPA (not sold in cans or bottles)
Harvest Moon Pig's Ass Porter
Harvest Moon Beltian White (not Belgian, it's named after the Little Belt mountains.)
Big Sky Moose Drool (it's the most iconic MT beef, although the others are better.)ETA: check out the adventures of a mountain mama blog. Her family lives in Mammoth.
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@travellingbee: Us too- bye bye tax return
My husband spent his clinical quarter of vet school doing wildlife research on antelope in Fort Collins, CO and got to spend some time in Yellowstone too and has always wanted to go back. I've never been and am so excited to so some wildlife photography!We spent Thanksgiving in Estes Park/RMNP and had a blast with the boys, so we are going for it!
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@jedeve: omg, I
you- thanks! I think we are going to hit most of the major areas (along with Grand Teton), I know it's a ton of driving! I've had Moose Drool before (they distribute to AZ), it was disappointing, so I'm hoping to give it a try fresh! Their berry beer was inconsistent, but the good ones were REALLY good!
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How fun! I went 2 years ago for my birthday. We stayed in Jackson WY. snake river brewing there is awesome. Good food and kid friendly too. For easy hike I recommend asking at one of the visitor centers. They can hook you up with maps and personalized info! Have fun!
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@lemondrop: everyone thinks Big Sky when they think Montana beers, but they are far from the best!
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Also, this just popped up in my newsfeed!
http://hub.sierratradingpost.com/to-do-yellowstone-teamsierra/
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@jedeve: oh my, perfect timing, thank you!! I wrote each of those down! I love a good kiddo recommendation.
Yeah, we'll give Big Sky another try fresh, but one of our favorite things is to try local beers we can only find locally- looking forward to checking out the others you listed (anything with the words Pig's Ass gets my attention!) We had some great finds in Estes Park over Thanksgiving!
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@lemondrop: no prob! We went to yellowstone and Chico on our honeymoon. I'm totally jonesing for another park trip! I want to take one this summer but I don't know if we will.
Montana has really weird beer distribution laws, so basically some of the local beers stay really local. There is a Montana beer trail guide you can find!
Are you going up to Glacier? I loved the Tetons as a kid. Have fun!
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@jedeve: we'll probably just stick with Yellowstone and Grand Teton, we are debating staying in Jackson at this point. Will definitely look up the beer trail!
I'd LOVE to go see Glacier, but it's yet another 8 hours drive across MT, and we are already driving 16 hours each way from AZ, so too daunting at thig gs point. We are probably already crazy, but the boys do well in the car.
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I am jealous too! We were in SF twice and each trip we didn't have enough time to do Yellowstone!
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@lemondrop: did you go? How was it? We are planning on taking the kids this weekend and this thread popped into mind!
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@jedeve: You must be reading my mind, I was thinking of updating just the other day! I hope you guys have fun, it was by far one of my favorite vacations! I'll update what we did over the next day or two in a couple posts
Thanks again for your advice, it was very helpful! So we drove from AZ, 16 hours each way, so we stopped at a halfway point overnight in Richfield, Utah. Provo was beautiful, but I felt very out of place, we loved Kanab and Park City though! We stayed in Jackson, WY just off of downtown in a great VRBO cabin (it even had baby gates and was SUPER dog and kid friendly).
We had dinner at Snake River Brewing upon arrival (fantastic!) and settled in and unpacked for the night.
The next day we just explored Jackson's tourist area and the National Elk Refuge (lots of pronghorn and big horn sheep) since we weren't really excited to get back in the car for very long after two full days on the road. Dinner in downtown Jackson at a sports bar, it was ok but had great photos on the wall and nice waitresses.
The next day we went into Grand Teton and hiked around Jenny Lake (this being the week before Memorial Day, nothing was really open yet) but it was nice out and super relaxing. We have a national parks pass ($80), so we could go in and out of both parks without restrictions. We had dinner at Q Roadhouse- phenomenomnomnomenal! We also saw our first moose on our way back to Jackson at the intersection of Moose-Wilson and 22.
We went into Yellowstone the next day, we drove through Teton since it was the first day the south entrance opened. We saw a black bear as we were passing by Colter Bay on our way out of Teton. We went to Old Faithful and the geysers in that area and Grand Prismatic. It was cold and rainy, but we had a lot of fun. Definitely have winter coats on hand year round in these parks! We brought tons of snacks with us and just snacked all day since not many things were open. Good chili dogs at the general store by Old Faithful
The Old Faithful Lodge was incredible, definitely a goal to stay there sometime! We kind of wished we did an overnight or two in Yellowstone, there was so much to see and much driving to do since the road was closed southeast of Old Faithful, so we had to drive the entire circle around to get there. On the way we saw trumpeter swans, bison, and a wolf, so it was well worth the drive! We left Yellowstone via Montana and Idaho and back to Jackson. It took about 2.5 hours each way regardless of the direction we went in.
you- thanks! I think we are going to hit most of the major areas (along with Grand Teton), I know it's a ton of driving! 
Thanks again for your advice, it was very helpful! 
The Old Faithful Lodge was incredible, definitely a goal to stay there sometime! We kind of wished we did an overnight or two in Yellowstone, there was so much to see and much driving to do since the road was closed southeast of Old Faithful, so we had to drive the entire circle around to get there. On the way we saw trumpeter swans, bison, and a wolf, so it was well worth the drive! We left Yellowstone via Montana and Idaho and back to Jackson. It took about 2.5 hours each way regardless of the direction we went in.
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