TravelGuides

(TGA) - Travel - We have more or less finalized out itinerary for a 7-day trip out of Denver. Any comments, particularly with regards to things I might be missing or under or overestimating in terms of time will be useful. My goal is to be on the road/sightseeing 8 to 8 everyday.
May 26: Arrive in Denver in evening, pick up car, drive to Cheyenne and spend the night -- trying to get a headstart towards the park.
May 27: Drive towards YNP through Casper, Thermopolis, Cody and onto Red Lodge. Stay at Lu Pine Inn for the night. Stop at Thermopolis for hot springs if time permits.
May 28: Assuming Beartooth highway is open (looks like there is a good chance according to local experts like Deb), take it to the park, enter through North East entrance, maybe have a late lunch near Tower area. Continue onto Mammoth. At the end of the day, drive to West Yellowstone where we have booking at the Yellowstone Inn.
May 29: Take the whole day to tour the "lower loop" in a clockwise direction: Madison->Norris->Canyon->Lake->West Thumb. Back into Yellowstone Inn. If there is time, stop by at one of the geysers in the Old Faithful area.
May 30: See the Old Faithful area for most of the day, and drive to Tetons in late afternoon. Stay at Signal Mountain Lodge.
May 31: See the Tetons, and late afternoon, drive to Rock Springs, spend the night there.
June 1: Drive to Granby, west entrance of Rocky mountain national park, drive through the trail ridge road in the park, and onto Denver by nightfall.
June 2: Tour the city, relax and head to airport 5-ish for return flight.
Some considerations we have made while putting this together:
1. Most everyone have suggested park lodging. Our Yellowstone Inn log cabin with full kitchen is the type of accommodation that we like very much, as opposed to what we can get in Old Faithful. Still, if we had something on the east side of the park, we would consider that because of the possibility of wildlife viewing at dawn, but Canyon isn't open and Lake is too expensive for us. In this itinerary, I couldn't fit in a dawn or dusk time at Lamar/Hayden valley, but friends told us that at this time we will still see plenty of wildlife.
2. We are not much of a hiker, so even though we may be pushing it timewise, I thought we could still hit the main spots.
3. For this itinerary, the only segment in the YNP loop we won't hit is the Dunraven pass -- anything unique there ?
Thanks for all your comments.
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There was a segment on our local news last night stating that they have started plowing Beartooth Pass. They had footage of snowplows working on a snowdrift. Yeaaaaa!
I love Dunraven Pass. If you can work it in I'd highly recommend it. I almost always see a grizzly just south of the pass. I almost always see a black bear or two just between Roosevelt and Tower. The scenery is just beyond beautiful.
My grandson and I did a daytrip into the park last Saturday. Our next daytrip will be Saturday of Memorial Weekend to go over Beartooth and into the park. We'll go over Dunraven Pass, spend some time at the falls and probably goes as far as West Thumb and backtrack our path back home.
We're both counting the days (and planning our 4 day camping trip in June).
Deb
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I second the enthusiasm for Dunraven Pass for the reasons cited.
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