Discover the Beauty and Adventures of Montana
Montana is a HUGE state with a ton to offer. While we’ve only really seen 3 areas in Montana, we know we need to go back to see more!
- We made one small stop at Medicine Rocks State Park on the way up to North Dakota (if you’re ever out in the middle of nowhere, stop there!)
- A full day in Big Sky Montana
- 3 nights in West Yellowstone
I’ll cover the last two in this post.
This trip was taken in June 2020
Check out full vlog here:
West Yellowstone
West Yellowstone was our home base for 3 nights of our adventure at Yellowstone National Park. (want to learn more about Yellowstone – check out the Wyoming Page!)
We stayed at a great hotel – the Holiday Inn West Yellowstone that we got with points… which was lucky because West Yellowstone is expensive! It was in a great location, walking distance to everything.
We spent each evening walking to dinner, and tried Canyon Street Grill and La Jungla (tacos in a bus!). Both were really good. We also got Ice Cream from a little stand called Espresso West one night.
There were lots of souvenir shops to walk around and check out – nothing overly exciting, but certainly enough to spend an evening.
We got takeout breakfast one morning before heading into Yellowstone at Ernies – yum.
There is plenty to do in West Yellowstone also. We weren’t feeling up to adding any additional activities to our plate after super long days in the park, but there is a Wolf Discovery Center that looks great, plus things like Gemstone ‘Mining’ and a nice visitor center.
The best part of this location was that it was just minutes from the entrance. This is super critical as the line to enter the park is insane. We got up each morning and were in line by 7:30 and there was still a good line ahead of us. Getting breakfast to go each morning is helpful and you can eat in the car or once you are inside the park.
Tip: most people bring in picnic lunches when exploring Yellowstone. We waited until we got to West Yellowstone to stock up on food and it was a mistake! The prices at the groceries in West Yellowstone were insane. If you’re doing the same, stop at a bigger grocery store before you get into town and get a cooler to bring everything with you. The stores in town are fine for small things you may need, but for us – needing 3-4 days of picnic lunches, we wasted a lot of money.
Big Sky
Our adventure in Montana took place as a day trip from West Yellowstone – we are so glad we added this as a little extra trip on top of our already busy agenda – because it was awesome.
We did this trip as our 2nd day based in West Yellowstone.
We left our hotel around 9am after taking 1 day of our two week trip to not wakeup before sun rise 🙂
The drive is supposed to be about 50 minutes but ended up taking 1.5 hours because they were paving the roads, but while we waited for the lead car to come pick us up each time we enjoyed the beautiful scenery. You drive through a beautiful canyon with river views and some nice pull offs. It’s honestly a gorgeous drive. Probably would have enjoyed it more if we weren’t tired of just waiting!
We took one hike while we were there, Ousel Falls which was one of our favorite hikes of the whole trip. The trail is pretty easy (maybe 1.5 miles roundtrip), walks along a river, has some places the kids can get in and throw rocks, and lands at a gorgeous waterfall. It also has this bridge overlooking the river with pine trees everywhere. It was the most peaceful, beautiful scene. We were disappointed that we left our packed lunch in the car because there were tons of picnic tables scattered about with gorgeous views, but we did stop to eat a snack. When done we found a picnic table near parking lot with another good view.
We then drove to Big Sky resort, which was beautiful. We just sat in some Adirondack chairs and relaxed for a while. There are things to do there but it was a little later in the day and they were pricey so we passed.
After that we just drove back to West Yellowstone for some more takeout!
