Yellowstone Vacation

Early last fall, my family (my wife, Gail, my daughter, Sarah, and I) took a trip to visit the nation's oldest national park, Yellowstone. We planned this vacation months in advance. We decided that we didn't want to go to Yellowstone when it was crowded and, yet, we didn't want to be prevented from seeing much of the park by winter road closures. So, the first thing that we did was to enroll Sarah in Huffaker elementary school. Huffaker is a "year-round" school. Instead of getting three months off in the summer, they start classes in July and have a three week break at the end of September. PERFECT! The crowds dissipate after Labor Day and the snow normally doesn't fly until mid October. Since it is not the peak summer vacation period, hotels and restaurants have vacancies and cheaper rates. Especially in Jackson Hole, which is a ski resort town. Jackson Hole is about 15 miles north of Jackson. That also makes it 15 miles closer to Yellowstone. Jackson Hole is located in the middle of Grand Teton National Park, which is adjacent to the southern edge of Yellowstone. We drove from Reno to Winnemucca and up through Idaho to Jackson Hole, Wyoming in late September. It was beautiful! The quakies were in their full fall riot colors! Jackson Hole is a small townlette located at the base of the ski resort. The ski resort is small area, about the size of Mt. Rose or Incline at Lake Tahoe, but what an awesome set of runs! They appear to be intermediate to expert. I saw a lot of double black diamonds on the trail map and very few green marks. There are only four motels there. The newest and best is the Best Western, but it was booked solid. So we stayed in the Sourjourner, which wasn't too bad. It did have a nice sports bar.

High resolution (246K) Continental Divide

Da Moosie

Tatanka

Old Faithful
 

Last Updated on 4 July 2004 by Art O'Connor