Covering some 2.2 million acres in the Middle Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone National Park is the world’s oldest, having been established on March 1, 1872. A World Heritage Site and International Biosphere Reserve, this huge park—mostly in northwestern Wyoming, but also sprawling into adjacent portions of Montana and Idaho—comes interwoven within an even larger wildland of immense ecological value: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This ranks among the largest and most intact protected landscapes in the temperate world, home to a superlative lineup of wildlife, including grizzly bears, gray wolves and bison.
Dominated by large overlapping volcanic calderas associated with the Yellowstone Hotspot, the park is also a geologic wonderland, home to the greatest concentration of geysers on Earth. From the almost otherworldly hydrothermal features to the high peaks of the Gallatin and Absaroka ranges, the scenery is sublime. And the park covers a remarkable gamut in terms of the visitor experience: Its “front-country” includes built-up villages, grand historic lodges and summer-clogged roads, but much of Yellowstone is deep wilderness constituting some of the most remote lands in the Lower 48.
For many Americans as well as international tourists, Yellowstone is a genuine bucket-list destination: the sort of special place everyone ought to have the chance to see at least once (and which definitely rewards those who return again and again). In the following guide to Yellowstone National Park, we’ll cover everything from must-see sights and must-do activities to some of the best regional lodging and dining. Let’s get going!
How to Get Around Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park is a big place, to say the least. What’s the best way to see this wonder of the world in terms of getting around?
By Car
A personal vehicle—your own or a rental—is still the overall best way to explore Yellowstone National Park on account of its vast area and general lack of public transportation. We certainly advise you to get out of that car as much as possible, but your own set of wheels will help you see more of the park by its extensive road system and, of course, navigate to and from your accommodations.
It’s nice to have the freedom of your own ride, in case you want to return to a spot that intrigued you on an initial driving tour or take a dawn or dusk foray to prime wildlife-viewing areas.
Keep in mind that the only road in the park kept open year-round is that between the North and Northeast entrances. The other roads in Yellowstone generally close by early November (depending on weather conditions) and remain closed—except for designated over-snow vehicles during certain winter months—until late April. In other words, if you’re coming to Yellowstone between late fall and mid-spring and plan to do your sightseeing by car, you’ll be much more limited as far as where you can go (we’ll talk more about this in the “Best Time to Visit” section).
By Tour Vehicle
If you want to maximize on-the-go sightseeing without worrying about driving and parking yourself, a guided road tour is a great idea—all the more so because of the interpretive information provided by your guide. Photography, wildlife-viewing (including wolf-watching) and other specialized tours are available from Park Service-authorized commercial companies.
In the winter, from about mid-December to mid-March, regulated over-snow travel takes the form of guided snowcoach and guided snowmobile tours.
By Snowmobile
In addition to those commercially led snowmobile tours, self-guided snowmobiling is possible in Yellowstone during the winter with a permit. The Park Service controls the number of snowmobile parties entering the park at any given time. Snowmobile rentals are available near some of the park entrances.
By Bicycle
Biking is allowed on Yellowstone’s paved roads as well as parking areas in the summertime, and, weather-permitting, during the spring on roads still closed to private/commercial vehicles. You can’t bike on park trails or boardwalks. Cyclists traveling the paved road system here should be prepared for long rides between visitor hubs and know how to safely negotiate traffic of both the vehicular and beastly kind. (Carry bear spray, just in case.)
On Foot
Yellowstone’s enormous trail network provides some of the finest hiking in the U.S., running the spectrum from accessible boardwalks and paved campground paths to back-of-beyond wilderness traces. Cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, meanwhile, opens up the almost endless winter wilds to on-foot travelers.
Best Time to Visit Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park draws visitors from around the world all year-round, and every stretch of the calendar here has major enticements. In this montane wilderness, with a harsh, high-elevation, cold continental climate, each of the four distinctive seasons sees the Yellowstone landscape in a different guise. If you fall under this most venerable national park’s spell (you will!) and truly wish to know it, make it a goal to see it in all of these guises.
Summer is prime time in Yellowstone, among the most popular national parks in the country. Expect lots of company this time of year on the park’s road system and at major, vehicle-accessible attractions such as Old Faithful, the Hayden Valley and Mammoth Hot Springs. Yet, as we've mentioned, most of Yellowstone is farflung and reachable only by foot; hikers and backcountry campers can easily find solitude even in the height of the summer tourism crunch.
Tourists come to Yellowstone at all times of year, though. Winter draws snowmobilers, cross-country skiers and wildlife photographers, who revel in the huge herds of elk and bison wintering in lower-elevation valleys and shadowed by hunting wolves; the cold also enhances the photogenic steam of the park’s hydrothermal features. Fall delights with golden aspens, bugling bull elk and often pitch-perfect hiking weather. Spring, always hard-earned in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, brims with new life, from wildflowers to freshly born elk, deer and bison—and adorable bear cubs following Mom out of the winter den.
Given its high elevation—most of the park lies at 7,000 feet or above—and its interior position, Yellowstone is generally a cool, even cold, place. Summer highs are usually exceedingly pleasant, typically climbing into the 70s (though the mountains tend cooler), but nights can be on the chilly side even in July and August. Winter—which tends to arrive early here—can be downright fierce: Daytime temps often range between the single digits and the 20s, while lows can dip well below zero. The record low temperature in the park was recorded in the winter of 1933: -66 degrees. Snowfall is copious, especially up on the Yellowstone Plateau; the park’s average annual snow accumulation is 150 inches.
Precipitation varies quite a bit across the park, from a low of about 10 inches in parts of the so-called Northern Range—Yellowstone’s comparatively lower-elevation northern strip below the volcanic highlands of the Yellowstone Plateau—to some 80 inches in the southwest, referred to as the “Cascade Corner” for its abundant streams and waterfalls. Winter visitors can expect extended stretches of falling flakes and socked-in conditions; campers and hikers in the summer need to be cognizant of the afternoon thunderstorms that clatter over Yellowstone on a regular basis that season.
We’ve mentioned already that the majority of Yellowstone’s road system is subject to seasonal closures, besides the year-round route between the North and Northeast entrances. Depending on weather conditions, the rest of the park roads—those accessing the interior of the park—generally close from mid-fall to mid-spring. These open for regulated over-snow travel (via authorized or permitted snowcoaches and snowmobiles) from mid-December to mid-March.
Keep in mind that weather may close roads in Yellowstone anytime—it’s not uncommon, for instance, to see snow temporarily shut down the route over Dunraven Pass between Tower Fall and Canyon Village in early fall, ahead of the seasonal closure—and that road-construction and maintenance work, which necessarily mostly has to take place in the summer months, often causes traffic delays.
Visitors timing their trip to Yellowstone should also be aware that the availability of services in the park such as campgrounds, lodging, food, groceries and fuel also fluctuates throughout the year, being limited from late September into May and in full operation during the summer.
The pageantry of Yellowstone National Park’s nature makes its own schedule, and might well influence yours depending on what you’d like to see. You can see bison anytime of year; rufous buffalo calves (nicknamed “red dogs”) cavort in spring and early summer, while the rut of high summer comes marked by lots of dramatic action, including bellowing, wallowing and sometimes head-butting bulls. Photographers who brave the winter cold, meanwhile, will love capturing shots of frosty, steamy bison as they trudge and plow through the snowpack.
You’re likely to see elk, too, just about whenever you come visit, but they’re generally less visible to most park visitors in the height of summer, when most are on remote high-country pastures. The September-to-October rut is a highlight, often downright up-close and personal at Mammoth Hot Springs—one of the most consistent places to see elk throughout the year. Like Mammoth, the Madison River meadows host calving elk in May and June, while large numbers of elk winter in the Lamar Valley.
Look for grizzly and black bears between about March and November. Springtime visitors may see bears grazing fresh green forage along roadways and, in places such as the Hayden and Lamar valleys, scavenging the carcasses of winter-killed ungulates. In May and early June, grizzlies are sometimes spotted chasing after elk herds in hopes of snagging a vulnerable young calf. Both grizzlies and black bears enter a phase of increased feeding (called “hyperphagia”) in the fall, readying for their winter sleep, and may become more visible accordingly.
Top Things to Do in Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone is not only the oldest and one of the largest national parks in the U.S., but also one of the most spectacularly varied in terms of visitor experience. World-famous front-country natural landmarks and old-school National Park Service architecture draw droves, while day hikers and backpackers access huge and blissfully quiet wilderness. The caliber of the wildlife-watching is matched by utterly mind-boggling geologic marvels.
Hydrothermal Sightseeing
The presence of the Yellowstone Hotspot explains the park’s superlative hydrothermal mosaic, which encompasses better than 10,000 features—including, at 500-plus, the planet’s greatest share of geysers. These geologic wonders were the primary original reason for Yellowstone National Park’s creation, and seeing them remains—along with wildlife-viewing—the top draw.
Yellowstone’s foundational magma chamber lies less than 10 miles below the terrain. Groundwater sourced from snowmelt and rain and seeping downward through fissured volcanic bedrock becomes superheated and buoyant, rising back up to the surface to fuel geysers, fumaroles, hot springs and other hydrothermal features.
Concentrations of these features, primarily located in topographic sags, form the geyser basins for which Yellowstone is internationally renowned. There are nine main basins, the most accessible of which are Gibson, Lower, Upper, Midway, West Thumb and Norris, the hottest and most active. Others, such as the Lone Star and Shoshone geyser basins, lie in remote backcountry. Norris Geyser Basin includes Earth’s tallest geyser, Steamboat (which can shoot more than 300 feet into the air), while Upper Geyser Basin contains the most famous: Old Faithful, which blasts its iconic plume about every 80 to 110 minutes or so.
Geysers take center stage, but Yellowstone’s other hydrothermal spectacles are just as captivating: from ethereal Grand Prismatic Spring, the biggest hot spring in North America, and the vivid runoff from the Excelsior hot spring pouring at 4,000 gallons per minute into the Firehole River—both in the Midway Geyser Basin—to the infernal mudpots of Mud Volcano and the great white travertine terrace of Mammoth Hot Springs, unique in its location well outside the bounds of the Yellowstone Caldera.
Wildlife Watching
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem supports the greatest concentration of large mammals in the Lower 48. The reintroduction of gray wolves in 1995 and 1996—one of the most successful and highest-profile projects of its kind anywhere in the world—restored the full suite of carnivores native to Yellowstone at the time of Euro-American exploration; others include grizzly and black bears, mountain lions, Canada lynx, bobcats, coyotes, red foxes, and wolverines. No fewer than eight species of hoofed mammal graze and browse here, including elk (aka wapiti, in one of the biggest herds in the world), moose, pronghorn, bighorn sheep and—most iconic of all—the American bison, which survived in the wilds of Yellowstone when exterminated from most other corners of its once-enormous North American range.
The abundance of Yellowstone’s wildlife—which, mind you, also includes fascinating smaller critters, from mountain bluebirds to snowshoe hares—and the extensive areas of open grassland and sage hills make the park one of the great safari destinations in the world. You can spy bison, elk, bears, and other “charismatic megafauna” just about anywhere, but the all-around most productive wildlife-viewing areas are the Northern Range—especially the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone’s far northeast—and the Hayden Valley in central Yellowstone, along with the meadows along the Madison and the Gibbon rivers.
The easiest way to spot wildlife in Yellowstone is simply to drive the park roads and watch for traffic slowdowns (include the classic “bear jams”) and clusters of folks at roadside pullouts with eyes glued to spotting scopes and binoculars. Early morning and evening are the most promising times in general, especially for spotting wolves and grizzlies, although Yellowstone wildlife tends to be quite habituated to human activity—at least along the road system—and can be visible anytime of day.
Outdoor Recreation
The size, spectacle and wildness of Yellowstone National Park make it a truly world-class place for outdoor recreation. We’ve already mentioned the rich hiking, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing possibilities. Climbers will find a surprising (given the park’s fame) abundance of obscure peaks to summit, boating here spans everything from quiet paddling to motorboat jaunts and horseback trail rides get you out and about in the expansive landscape in cowboy/cowgirl style.
Visit Yellowstone Lake
Covering about 130 square miles, boasting a 141-mile-long shoreline, and reaching an impressive maximum depth of around 430 feet, Yellowstone Lake—another of the park's surfeit of natural wonders—looks almost oceanic in scale. This largest high-elevation lake in North America is a must-see, whether you’re camping or lodging along its shores, going boating, fishing for non-native lake trout (and thus performing an ecological service) and watching native cutthroat trout from Fishing Bridge or photographing the alpenglow on the Absaroka peaks that fortress the eastern skyline.
See the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Set in the heart of the park downstream of the Hayden Valley, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River is yet another crown jewel. Running some 20 miles and reaching better than 1,000 feet deep, this brightly colored chasm comes sluiced by the spectacular 308-foot-tall Lower Falls, the largest waterfall in the American Rockies by volume; Yellowstone’s tallest waterfall, meantime, the 1,200-foot Silver Cord Cascade, threads down the canyon’s southern sidewall. Nesting ospreys enhance the summer scene in this magnificent defile.
Join a Ranger-Led Program
From campground amphitheater talks to guided hikes and snowshoes, Yellowstone’s year-round ranger-led programming is outstanding—and an exceptional way to deepen your appreciation of and knowledge about this globally precious realm.
Where to Stay in Yellowstone National Park
The following properties offer AAA-rated accommodations within convenient reach—sometimes mere minutes away—of Yellowstone National Park. (Yellowstone, of course, also has numerous campgrounds and hotel/lodge/cabin accommodations within its bounds.)
The Lodge at Big Sky
- Address: 75 Sitting Bull Rd, Big Sky, MT
- Diamond-designation: Approved
- Best for: Outdoor recreation access, views
Set at the base of Big Sky Resort’s Lone Peak, The Lodge at Big Sky offers more than 80 units serving up splendid mountain views. Kick back in front of the lobby fireplace or marinate awhile in one of the indoor or outdoor hot tubs.
Explorer Cabins at Yellowstone
- Address: 201 Grizzly Ave, West Yellowstone, MT
- Diamond-designation: Three Diamond
- Best for: Ambience, location
Set a stone’s throw from the West Entrance of Yellowstone National Park, the Explorer Cabins at Yellowstone serve up all sorts of charming amenities, including binoculars and walking sticks readymade for nature appreciation—not to mention private porches and 65-inch TVs.
Yodeler Motel
- Address: 691 S. Broadway Ave, Red Lodge, MT
- Diamond-designation: Approved
- Best for: Charm, history
Built in 1909 as apartment housing and transformed in the 1960s into a Bavarian-style inn, the Yodeler Motel is a Red Lodge fixture on the National Register of Historic Places, offering a good stopover for travelers entering or exiting Yellowstone via the stunning Beartooth Highway. The Yodeler includes a ski/snowboard-waxing room, a covered hot tub in an outdoor gazebo and EV charging stations.
Elephant Head Lodge
- Address: 1170 N. Fork Hwy, Yellowstone National Park, WY
- Diamond-designation: Approved
- Best for: Serenity, scenery, location
Another National Register-listed property, the Elephant Head Lodge puts you up in cozy, rustic cabins—sleeping up to eight and some with kitchenettes—surrounded by the Shoshone National Forest and only about a dozen miles from the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Named for a distinctive nearby rock formation, the lodge is a wonderful place to disconnect.
Yellowstone River Motel
- Address: 14 E. Park St., Gardiner, MT
- Diamond-designation: Approved
- Best for: Location, value
A stone’s throw from the North Entrance with its historic Roosevelt Arch, the Yellowstone River Motel offers nearly 40 guest rooms, some of them with kitchens and multiple bedrooms. A highlight is the patio overlooking the Yellowstone River, complete with grills guests can use.
Where to Eat in Yellowstone National Park
Along with the restaurants and cafeterias found within Yellowstone National Park, the following AAA-recommended eateries in adjacent or nearby communities (all within an hour-and-a-half of the park boundary) are good places to attend to that grizzly-sized appetite of yours.
Hanks Chop Shop
- Address: 221 N. Canyon St., West Yellowstone, MT
- Diamond-designation: Approved
- Type of Cuisine: American/Steakhouse/Pub Grub
The lively Hanks Chop Shop combines a full bar (with some two dozen brews on tap) with eats such as bison burgers, elk-sausage pasta, fresh-caught trout and wood-fired pizza. Seasonal patio dining is available, and numerous big-screen TVs are ideal for catching the game during your Yellowstone vacation.
Snake River Grill
- Address: 84 E. Broadway, Jackson, WY
- Diamond-designation: Three Diamond
- Type of Cuisine: American
The Snake River Grill has been delivering fine dining on the Jackson Town Square since 1993. From the caviar service and dishes such as steak-tartare pizza and Wagyu ribeye to the 300-odd wines available, this popular eatery within easy reach of both Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks embodies rustic-luxe.
Montana Ale Works
- Address: 611 E. Main St., Bozeman, MT
- Diamond-designation: Approved
- Type of Cuisine: American
Among Bozeman’s best-loved establishments, Montana Ale Works serves up bison steaks, 40-plus beers on tap and artisan Big Sky spirits within the historic Northern Pacific freight building. Multiple dining areas offer distinct vibes, from the bar and lounges to the outdoor patio and unique railcar seating.
Hatch Taqueria & Tequilas
- Address: 120 W. Broadway Ave, Jackson, WY
- Diamond-designation: Approved
- Type of Cuisine: Mexican
A stone’s throw from the Jackson Town Square, Hatch Taqueria & Tequilas specializes in thoughtfully prepared Mexican cuisine with various Greater Yellowstone inflections—including elk quesadillas and braised bison enchiladas. A sweeping selection of mezcal and tequila will appeal to connoisseurs of spirits.
Yellowstone National Park Photo Spots
Choosing the most scenic, photo-worthy locales in Yellowstone National Park is, on one level, a fool's errand, but we're giving it a try below!
- Artist Point–Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone: It’s pretty much impossible to take a bad picture from Artist Point, among the defining viewpoints of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Lower Falls.
- Old Faithful: The fame and consistency of this celebrity geyser, with predicted eruption times posted daily in the Old Faithful Inn, make it Yellowstone’s signature photo op.
- Mammoth Hot Springs: The steaming terraces of Mammoth Hot Springs are, naturally, the chief attraction, but the vicinity offers other bountiful photo ops as well—from ubiquitous elk (rowdiest during the fall rut) to the Fort Yellowstone architecture of this National Historic Landmark District.
- The Lamar Valley: What might be the most Edenic vistas in America unfurl before you in this expansive glen, where bison, elk, pronghorn, grizzlies and wolves do their thing below a backdrop of castellated peaks.
- Grand Prismatic Spring: More than 350 feet across, deep blue and rimmed with orange and yellow, this third-biggest hot spring on the planet is piercingly, dreamily beautiful.
- Mount Washburn: Go on a popular day hike to the fire lookout tower atop this 10,243-foot peak on Mount Washburn—the grant remnant of a lopped-off Absaroka volcano—to photograph its sweeping panorama, which stretches from the Beartooth Plateau down to the serrated crest of the Tetons.
- West Thumb: The West Thumb Geyser Basin encompasses a unique collection of hydrothermal features right along the shores—and beneath the waters—of Yellowstone Lake, presenting some of the park’s most enigmatic scenery.
Day Trips From Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park is the heart of a truly special region, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and there’s much to explore—from other natural glories to towns brimming with Old West spirit—in the park’s big backyard. Here are some ace day-trip destinations out of Yellowstone!
1. Grand Teton National Park: South of Yellowstone and connected to it by the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway (also managed by the National Park Service), Grand Teton National Park includes one of America’s most glorious mountain fronts in the steep, skyscraping rise of the Teton Range above the wildlife-rich Snake River flats of Jackson Hole.
- Distance From Yellowstone: ~15 miles
2. Jackson, Wyoming & the National Elk Refuge: At the doorstep of Grand Teton National Park, Jackson is one of the American West’s best-known (and sheeshiest) mountain towns, anchored by the iconic elk-antler arch of the Town Square. The National Elk Refuge, meanwhile, supports a massive winter herd of wapiti (as well as many bison) most charmingly viewed via horse-drawn sleigh rides.
- Distance From Yellowstone: ~65 miles
3. The Beartooth Highway: All the approaches to Yellowstone National Park are scenic, but none so glorious as the up-in-the-clouds Beartooth Highway (U.S. Route 212) between Red Lodge and Cooke City, which reaches nearly 11,000 feet amid the gorgeous alpine tundra, lakes and glacially sculpted peaks of the Beartooth Plateau.
- Distance From Yellowstone: 0-70 miles
4. Cody, Wyoming: Not far east of Yellowstone, springboard for the park’s East Entrance and the alternate approach of the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway through the Absarokas, Cody also makes its own destination, thanks to a packed schedule of summer rodeos (including one of the biggest in the country, the Cody Stampede) and the impressive museums of the Buffalo Bill Cody Center of the West. The town’s also home to the Yellowstone Regional Airport.
- Distance From Yellowstone: ~50 miles
Visiting Yellowstone National Park on a Budget
Pay your entrance fee, and you’ll get to enjoy the amazements of Yellowstone at minimal cost. As with just about every other U.S. national park, this is a fine destination for the budget-conscious traveler.
Here are some tips for minimizing travel expenses when traveling to Yellowstone National Park!
- Be Selective About Where You Go: Covering all of Yellowstone National Park’s road system involves a lot of driving. If you’re here in a gas guzzler, consider focusing on just a few areas—some of the geyser basins, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone/Hayden Valley area, etc.—to both save money and get to know parts of the park more deeply.
- Visit on a Free Admission Day: Yellowstone and other U.S. national parks offer a number of days each year when the entrance fee is waived. These include certain national holidays (such as Juneteenth and Veterans Day), National Public Lands Day (September 28) and the first day of National Park Week (April 20).
- Use Your AAA Membership: Being a member of AAA means great discounts on accommodations, rental cars, tickets and other travel expenditures.
- Prepare Your Own Meals: Although there are many options for buying prepared food in Yellowstone, consider whipping up your own lunches and dinners and enjoying them at any of the park’s numerous and well-maintained picnic areas.
- Purchase an “America the Beautiful” Pass If You’ll Be Visiting Multiple National Parks: Valid for a year and covering unlimited admission to national parks during that time, an America the Beautiful pass (the U.S. National Parks & Federal Recreation Land Pass) is a great deal if, as so many do, you’ll be combining Yellowstone with visits to other parks—including such nearby ones as Grand Teton and Craters of the Moon—on the same trip.
Plan Your Trip to Yellowstone National Park With AAA!
Join the over a million people who are AAA members and start planning your trip to Yellowstone National Park today. Dream up the perfect trip with our Trip Canvas research tool and use your membership to get the best discounts on hotels, rental cars and entertainment tickets.