Posted: 02/09/2007--25/11/2008 || Rate this Article: 3 || Views|| Sign In || Register ||Hello Guest
Of course, the very best thing to do in the Yellowstone area is go to Yellowstone National Park. The variety of activities to do in the park is endless! In the summer, families can go camping and backpacking in the park and in the backcountry. Reservations are highly recommended for this. There are horseback rides with cookouts for families with children older than eight, and stagecoach rides for families with smaller children. A photo safari to photograph and see some of the parks incredible wildlife is also available. For those who only have a short time and want to see the best highlights of Yellowstone, there is the Yellowstone in a Day guided motor coach tour that stops at Mammoth Hot Springs, Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, and Dunraven Pass.
If water sports are more your thing, there is canoeing, kayaking, fishing, and cruises around gorgeous Yellowstone Lake. These activities can either be done with a guide or on your own.
Yellowstone has a wonderful Junior Ranger program for children ages 5-12. This program introduces kids to the natural wonders of Yellowstone and their role in preserving it for the future. The Yellowstone Buddies program is for children 6-11 and offers short tours guided by a fun and knowledgeable park ranger. There are also wonderful day hikes, such as the Firehole Basin Tour, which explores the four geothermic features of the park. You will see geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and mud pots. This is a great way to see a lot of what Yellowstone offers without overdoing it for younger children.
Winter activities abound in Yellowstone as well. Snowmobiling, snowcoach rides, and cross-country skiing are just a few of the snowy activities you can do when the park is white. All these activities can be accessed when you get to Yellowstone or you can go online and book them ahead of time. These activities can also be done with a guide or o your own using rented equipment.
In nearby Jackson Hole, Wyoming, there are plenty of places to stay, eat and enjoy the outdoors. Jackson Holes historic town square, which features the famous elk antler arches, in a wonderful place to spend a day. There are tasty restaurants, cute gift shops and fun art galleries. The Museum of Wildlife Art is a fabulous place to visit. Or you can catch a stagecoach ride around town, and then enjoy the cowboy shootouts in the summer, staged just for the tourists. For evening fun, try the Chuckwagon dinner show or the outdoor summer theater. Jackson also offers hot air balloon rides over the area, which is fantastic!
In the winter, you can go tubing at Snow King Tubing Park, or skiing at Teton Village. Several places in Jackson offer dog sledding and sleigh rides in the adjacent Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.
Just five miles outside of Yellowstone is the town of West Yellowstone, Montana. The Museum of Yellowstone is located here, with displays on the wildlife and geology of the area. For more active fun, families can go to Amazen Yellowstone, which is a giant maze and candy shop. The maze is especially fun when you choose to do it with squirt guns or at night with only flashlights!
When you kids are begging to see a bear, you can go to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center, where you can see bears and wolves in a naturalistic environment, or take a drive through Yellowstone Bear World, which showcases both grizzly and black bears, wolves, elk, bison and other assorted wildlife.
Other activities include whitewater rafting tours on the nearby Snake River, and the historic gold mining towns of Virginia City and Nevada City.
If you still have time, a visit to Cody, Wyoming, the home of Buffalo Bill Cody is a good place to go. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center is huge! Filled with exhibits on Buffalo Bill, it also contains a firearms museum, western art museum, Plains Indian Museum, and a Yellowstone ecosystem museum. You could spend days in it and never see it all!
Cody also has the Cody Nite Rodeo. Every night during the summer, there is a rodeo. Activities for kids include calf scramble and stick horse races.
The Yellowstone area boasts so many activities, National Parks, and things to do in both summer and winter than you could never see and do them all. This is just a sampling of the many wonderful opportunities available to your family. Rest assured, you wont be bored and you can find something to interest every member of your family, young and old.
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