Conquering Yellowstone and Teton in 3 days

Written By Paul Lundqvist

Can it be done? It can, I tell you, and we did it! This was my 3rd or 4th trip to Teton and Yellowstone and a pretty darn good one at that. We saw bears, moose, elk, bison, and a wolf or a coyote (too far away to tell). In addition to that, we saw the sites! And what sites there were to be seen! Teton brings the views in ways that Colorado cannot match. They’re more jaw dropping. Colorado is a beautiful place to live and have as a base, but when you see the Tetons, you have to take a step back. You don’t necessarily have to do that in Colorado.

A while back, I came upon a new idea for the national parks: to primarily skim the parks in addition to doing a 1 or 2 deeper dives, in the form of long hikes, to get a better view. This trip, we ended up doing three hikes. A lot of people, and especially those visiting Yellowstone, sit and wait at specific locations for wildlife to emerge from the woods, or they think they are going to spend hours at each site (like Old Faithful) and end up wasting a lot of time just soaking in one or two locations. Many of the sites in Yellowstone and Teton are single hour sites. Watch Old Faithful erupt, walk around and see the other geysers and keep moving. You don’t have to watch it erupt several times and you can only see a certain number of geysers before it starts to get old. In addition, wildlife prefer to be out and about at certain times of the day and if you can learn when and where, you can just go to those places and not waste your whole day waiting on an event that may or may not happen. You’re likely going to see wildlife anyway (Yellowstone is an outdoor zoo) and, plus, there are tons of other things to see that are also good. You could potentially ruin a whole trip if you just sit in one spot.

I call this the “spider method.” You spread out like a web, but you have certain areas in which you stop and hang out for longer periods of time.

In three days time, we:

  • Saw Jenny Lake at night

  • Caught sunrise at Schwabacher’s Landing and Jenny Lake and saw two moose on the way

  • Saw Old Faithful erupt and took pictures of the other geysers

  • Went to Fairy Falls and captured Grand Prismatic Spring from above

  • Went to Norris Geyser Basin

  • Hiked Storm Point Trail

  • Saw a grizzly eating a bison as well as a wolf/coyote in Hayden Valley, plus boatloads of (live) roaming bison

  • Captured the (smokey) sunrise at Mormon Row

  • Saw the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

  • Hiked the Sublime Point trail at the GCY

  • Saw Tower Falls

  • Saw a blackbear resting peacefully on a tree at Roosevelt

  • Saw Yellowstone’s petrified tree

  • Spent an evening in Lamar Valley and didn’t see a darn thing except for more buffalo

  • Hiked the Death Valley trail down to Phelp’s Lake

  • Jumped off of jumping rock and had a picnic afterwards

  • Ate lunch and captured some awesome images at Dornan’s

Black Bear

Another thing I want to bring up is the cost effectiveness of an adventure like this. Driving all the way there from Boulder, Co and paying for 3 nights of camping, the total cost of the trip was around $400 for me. 8 hours of driving each way. A certain someone spent more money on food and accessories than was necessary if you just want to have a nice time. I’m not including that stuff because you are going to eat food regardless of whether or not you go to Yellowstone. If you want to go to Yellowstone and Teton on the cheap, in comparison to an exotic vacation elsewhere, you can! I made a vlog about our 3 day packed Yellowstone and Teton trip below:

Paul Lundqvist
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