West Yellowstone, MT

WOW, what a great RV Park within walking distance to town! Grizzly RV Park. Every campsite is well maintained and landscaped with plenty of room between sites. The roads are paved and the sites are concrete pads.

West Yellowstone is the western entrance to this great national park. The town itself has everything you need, restaurants, bars, gift shops, hot dog stands, gas stations, propane, hotels, motels, cabins, etc. Everything to entertain visitors daily. The town comes alive early as park visitors line up to gain entrance and bottle up the streets to a halt in all directions.

We lucked out while there as there was a big antique car show in the town park.  Over 100 cars joined in the festivities which started with a town parade. There were vintage, hot rods and collector cars of all kinds.  It was a great afternoon to cruise through the collection, meet the owners and pick out our favorites.

When you plan to visit Yellowstone National Park, no visit is complete without seeing the spectacle of Old Faithful. And this western entrance is the one with the best access to her. We rose early to get in line at the entrance of the park for our drive to Old Faithful.  It was another magnificent ride with lots of animals to view.  Including a few Bison that liked taking to the road. Now that’s up close and personal.   When we arrived at the Old Faithful area, we lucked out with an amazing parking space in front of the main lodge and a short walk to the viewing area. Calli wasn’t allowed near the platform area close to the general viewing but we found a comfortable bench perfect to see the show. Old Faithful spouts on a timed event every ninety minutes or so and we waited about 30-35 minutes and it was worth the wait. Calli gave it two paws up and the crowd that had gathered (about 150-200 people) cheered the show! 

We then continued the circular route we had planned out to see what other beautiful sites the park would avail. Being the last section of Yellowstone to visit we had now covered them all.  We were so grateful to having seen all the animals we read about that call the park home. Only ones we missed were grizzlys and wolves.  But, no worries, they have an answer to this. West Yellowstone is home to the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center.  A non-profit organization that removes at-risk animals and those requiring medical care into an environment that helps them feel comfortable to heal and allows us to observe and understand their habits and abilities.

Upon entering the facility, the main building tells the background story and life cycle of the type of animals you are likely to see in the area. It explains their typical environment and habits for survival as they adapt to seasonal change.  Inside they have some of the animals that have been taxidermized such as grizzly and black bear, wolves, beaver and otters and birds of prey. Standing next to that grizzly gives you chills as their paws are massive, heads huge and bodies massive. We wouldn’t want to encounter one of these in the wild that may be looking for a snack!

Outside the main building are designated areas for Bears, wolves, birds of prey and beavers and otters. Our first stop is the grizzly bear habitat. They release one or two bears to roam the fenced area as visitors can observe them doing their bear thing. (BTW, not possible for these animals to escape their environment, or at least we hoped.) These bears, we were amazed at the weight of these animals ranging from 350 to close to 700 pounds! And yes just as scary. We could not imagine running into any of these species in the wild. Even with the highly promoted BEAR SPRAY, if we came across one of these giant Grizzlys I think we would just die instantly from shear fright. Seeing them fairly close up was quite enough.   

The wolves are in the next area we explored. The two in this environment were grey wolves and quite beautiful. One was grey / black in color while the other was almost all white.

The birds of prey exhibited owls, a turkey vulture and a pair of majestic bald eagles. The beaver and otter house was not available as the creatures hadn’t been released for display when we visited.

All in all, we would highly recommend visiting as your entrance admission helps to support the animal’s nutrition, veterinary care, and educational programs.

A great stay and now onward we travel!