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June 1, 2024

Roadtripping and Camping In The West W/ Kids: Spire Rock Campground Through Yellowstone To Flagg Ranch Campground-(12)

Son of a Sailor

Driving roadtrip from campground to campground through Yellowstone National Park

Knowing we were heading through one of the most gorgeous drives in the US, we pulled out of Spire Rock Campground early and headed toward Yellowstone, knowing it would be a long drive day.

Yellowstone

Essentially we headed out of Spire Rock Campground through the Custer-Gallatin National Forest on the 191 until we reached one of the gateways to Yellowstone…the town of West Yellowstone. From here, it’s hurry up and wait to get through the west entrance and then follow LONG lines of slow traffic through the park, heading south. When I say slow traffic, I mean…really slow because when we went through the park in June, there was still massive construction projects fixing the roads due to flood damage from June of 2022…projects not complete. The flooding disaster in the northern portion of the park was from over 7.5 – 9.5 inches of rain and snowmelt in a single day in June, 2022. This led to widespread flooding, roads were wiped away and damage was widespread. So even on our trip, massive road construction projects were in full swing and evident.

Knowing we needed to get all the way to Flagg Ranch Campground (right between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks), we didn’t do lots of tourist stops (one stop at the Grant Village Visitors Center). As such, we skipped Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, the Abyss Pool at West Thumb Basin, Mammoth Hot Springs area and various mudpit stops. But we drove by many of these attractions, with my co-pilot snapping pictures of everything as we went. This frustrated the co-pilot and kids, but we were already slow slow slow because of traffic. Note: Plan bathroom stops on this drive, cause there’s not alot accessible and there’s very long driving miles between anything that might be open and available.

Driving through Yellowstone, we were treated to a wildlife show…we saw the wild buffalo herds and we saw wild bears just off the road as well as a bull elk. These were the highlights of the drive.

**Wild Buffalo herd inside Yellowstone**

Flagg Ranch Campground

After our Yellowstone drive, we were ready for a break and Flagg Ranch Campground didn’t disappoint. You can get a reservation online for this unique campground that sits directly between two national parks….Yellowstone and Grand Tetons. The views once you take a short walk around the campground on the Grand Teton side are incredible and we were thankful to have a small store to play tourist and grab some ice cream . We had a reservation to stay here two nights and loved our campsite….until we didn’t. Toward evening, we noticed the mosquitoes but put on repellent and didn’t think much of it. That evening we went to a campground host discussion on the local area and natural history, but were forced to leave after the mosquitoes got so bad they were biting through my jeans. As we hid in our tents we decided not to stay another night, it was time to move on.

**Campground Host Natural History Discussion- we would last about another 10 minutes before it was too many mosquitoes.**

**Views of the Tetons from the campground.**

We’ll go through Grand Tetons National Park in next week’s post, but I wanted to comment how special and beautiful Yellowstone Park is, even to outdoor enthusiasts like us.