Yellowstone National Park with kids

We visited Yellowstone July 15-21, 2019 with our almost-3 and 7-year old daughters, fully prepared for the high-summer crowds about which we’d been warned by others and the internet. The crowds were indeed huge, but only in certain areas such as around Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic Spring, and were not so bad in other areas such as the northeastern part of the park. Overall the experience was great for both us and the kids, and I can highly recommend it despite the crowds. Below are some tips that I can offer based on our experience in this amazing park.

Geothermal features- this is so obvious that it hardly needs introduction. Old Faithful geyser is the most famous of these, but there are numerous other bubbling, spurting holes in the ground and hot springs concentrated in the southwestern part of the park and at Norris and a few other locations. My own kids were only mildly interested in walking the boardwalks with the hordes and after a couple stops they had had enough. The eggy smell was a primary factor for them not wanting to spend too much time in the geothermal areas, and for my wife and me it was the crowds. We didn’t push it, but did see Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic Spring. Older kids will probably be much more interested than ours, and will want to see every last feature. The Park Service does a very nice job of building and maintaining boardwalks. Old Faithful is worth seeing, but it is not the biggest geyser. It is so popular because it is so predictable. You will get a sense of its popularity before you even arrive. The park road turns into a four-lane road briefly at old faithful, with an interstate-like interchange and “highway” overpass. A four-lane road is the approach to the huge parking lot, which is almost surrounded by gift shops, a food store, a big visitor center, a historic lodge (interesting and worth a look inside), a new lodge with a cafeteria, and various other buildings. Then, notice the benches around the geyser that are meant to accommodate the huge number of tourists. If you arrive close to the eruption time, it will be hard to find a spot! The eruptions are roughly every 90 minutes with an uncertainty window of ten minutes before or after the predicted time. There is also an iPhone app that you can install that has park-predicted eruption times. We were initially concerned that our younger daughter would stray from or fall off the boardwalk and into some dangerously hot water, but it was never a problem. She respected the boardwalk and never came close to coming off of it.

We did the short hike around the geyser as well, which goes to a number of interesting features. The kids wanted to go as quickly as possible through all of this, and were primarily interested in working on the Junior Ranger badges. My wife and I would have liked to linger more.

Mammoth hot springs, in the north end of the park, has a slightly different feel. It is a very beautiful and interesting site, but you don’t see much bubbling, spurting, boiling, or erupting. The primary interest is the travertine terraces formed by hot springs, and boardwalks guide you around the site.

Junior Ranger and Young Scientist programs- Yellowstone National park has a really great Junior Ranger and Young Scientist programs. The Young Scientist program varies depending on where you do it (we did it at Canyon so it was all about the canyon formation). You pay $3 for a Junior Ranger booklet at any visitor center, and $5 for the Young Scientist booklet, and upon completion you go back to the visitor center and get tested and sworn in by a ranger. And you get the beautiful badges pictured below! Our older daughter in particular got very engaged with much of what the park had to offer primarily because of the thrill of earning one of these badges, and they do have really nice badges! Activities included attending (and getting a signature) a ranger-led program, a wildlife checklist, some games, and some learning activities. Highly recommended!

Wildlife spotting- this is what kept us busy and our kids engaged and eager to explore. It helped a lot to have a list of wildlife to see. We used Mac’s field guide which is available from Amazon here . You can also buy them at many of the visitor centers. They made it so that the kids could “collect” animals by spotting them, and they could easily see what they were looking for that we had not yet “collected”. So that was a fun project. Make sure you get out and look for wildlife in the early mornings or in the evenings. Also, keep your distance and certainly don’t approach wildlife. Those bison can sure appear mellow, but can also run very fast and can seriously injure or kill people. It happens regularly.

Hot spots included:

• Hayden Valley- large open meadows in a broad valley with the Yellowstone River flowing through it. Beautiful, and rich with wildlife. Our special treat here was trumpeter swans.

• Blacktail Plateau Drive (off the Mammoth-Tower/Roosevelt road in the north)- a beautiful drive through wonderful meadows on hillsides covered with wildflowers. We saw two black bears and a northern goshawk hunting a grouse here, as well as various other interesting animals.

• Lamar Valley- the most wonderful spot for animals in the park. This broad river valley and surrounding hillsides hosts large bison herds, pronghorn, and is the best place in the park to see wolves. We saw distant wolves on several occasions, and once were treated to a wolf crossing the road just 100 feet in front of us. I did not have my camera ready because I was driving, but I took the photo below right afterward as the wolf was trotting up the opposite hillside. Other highlights included grizzly bears in the river, bison fights (we were there during the rut), pronghorns, and coyotes, and the valley is surrounded by beautiful mountains. You will see many people with spotting scopes along the road in the Lamar Valley, and they will often have their scopes trained on a wolf or bear. In general, they will let you have a look at what they are seeing. Or, if you have a spotting scope, bring it! We only had binoculars but definitely will invest in a spotting scope before our return.

• Absaroka Range- this rugged mountain range in the remote and uncrowded northeastern corner of the park has its own unique wildlife. Although less easy to spot than in the Lamar or Hayden Valleys, wildlife abounds. We spotted mountain goats (the big white shaggy ones), a long-tailed weasel, and yellow-bellied marmots.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone- While our kids are not particularly interested in beautiful scenery, they were happy to go along on short explorations of this extraordinary place. There are short hikes that descend into the canyon on both the south and north rims, and these offer an exciting view of the top of the lower waterfall as well as views from further down-canyon. The trails are short and easy enough to make enjoyable adventures with the kids. And of course it goes without saying that they are beautiful. Be prepared for large crowds at the parking lots, but the trails into the canyon or along the rim that are more than 2 minutes from a parking lot are not so bad.