Our Yearly Vacation To YNP

GAT

GAT

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Long, long ago, my wife, Virginia, and I would take a yearly trip to fish the Yellowstone country. We'd take off the first of September and stay at the same motel in West Yellowstone year after year.

This time of year reminds me of those trips.

We'd fish the Madison, Henry's Fork, the Yellowstone, the Firehole but like fishing The Lamar the best. In those days you wouldn't see another angler on the river and yet the dry fly fishing could be fabulous for the cutts. Gin always did her best on the Lamar. At the end of the day we'd stop by the Barns Holes because it was so close to West Yellowstone and fish the evening hatch. The most memorable evenings were when the moon was full.

We'd devote most of one day walking around town and visiting the fly and gift shops. We'd spend the big bucks to eat at one of the high end restaurants for our last dinner of the trip. We always regarded the YNP area as the meca for fly angling so to go there each year was similar to a ritual .... but a fun ritual.

I'm sure much has changed over the decades we haven't been to YNP but we do have a ton of photos we took and better yet, a lot of fond memories. I can't imagine a better place to take a yearly vacation. ... at least in those days.
 
It's still a fun and amazing place to visit at this time of year. The roads, however, are more crowded. And be sure to make motel reservations well in advance. But one thing I've found still to be true, walk a quarter mile away from pavement, and the park is still very un-crowded.
 
Salmo_g said:
It's still a fun and amazing place to visit at this time of year. The roads, however, are more crowded. And be sure to make motel reservations well in advance. But one thing I've found still to be true, walk a quarter mile away from pavement, and the park is still very un-crowded.
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I'm glad it still holds true. Usually, you could walk away from the most popular spots and still find plenty of fish to catch.
 
Salmo_g said:
It's still a fun and amazing place to visit at this time of year. The roads, however, are more crowded. And be sure to make motel reservations well in advance. But one thing I've found still to be true, walk a quarter mile away from pavement, and the park is still very un-crowded.
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FWIW, we found YNP far less crowded this July (height of tourist season) than any year in recent memory. When we first entered the park I joked to my friend, "Are we in a nuclear war with China or Russia and everyone left to go home to their families?" Several prominent pullouts were empty of cars. It was weird. Hoping the masses checked that box in '20 and '21 and sold the RV.
 
It's possible all the reports of washed out roads helped reduce the crowds.

We fished YNP for many years before "the fire"... Once the wildfire ran around the park for months and received a lot of press coverage, an abnormal amount of tourists showed up the following year to see a park they may not have even thought about before it showed up all over the news.

So if anything, the fire didn't cause the number of tourists to decline but to go up ... at least that's what it looked like to us.
 
GAT said:
It's possible all the reports of washed out roads helped reduce the crowds.

We fished YNP for many years before "the fire"... Once the wildfire ran around the park for months and received a lot of press coverage, an abnormal amount of tourists showed up the following year to see a park they may not have even thought about before it showed up all over the news.

So if anything, the fire didn't cause the number of tourists to decline but to go up ... at least that's what it looked like to us.
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I suspect high fuel costs were another factor.
 
I had an Aunt who worked there in her teens (late 1920's) - lived in wall tents and Grizzlies wandering through "town" on a regular basis was routine. When we went there when I was a kid, Old Faithful was just that, boardwalks everywhere, very few concrete walkways and lots of critters. It's still a special place.
 
I lived there starting in the mid 80s for a dozen years. Bears were still roaming through town at night when I moved there. I feel really fortunate to have experienced the fishing in the greater Yellowstone area at the time. Still really cool, but it bums me out to see how popular it has become.
 
I was in YNP before the floods this year and the crowds were significant. I’ve gone annually since 1997 and 2020 was the worst I have seen it, followed by 2021 and then this year. I suspect less people were around in July because of the road situation. My favorite part of the park is still closed but most of it is open. I imagine a lot of folks cancelled plans soon after all the floods not knowing if much of the park would be open at all this summer.
 
Interesting that 2016 was the record visitation year, and that things were trending downward - until everyone got tired of COVID and bought/rented an RV in '21.
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The list below shows the year-to-date trend for recreation visits over the last several years (through July):
  • 2022 – 1,864,771 (The park was closed June 13 through June 21. Three entrances opened June 22)
  • 2021 – 2,668,765
  • 2020 – 1,674,699 (The park was closed May 1 through May 18. Two entrances were open May 18 through May 31)
  • 2019 – 2,294,691
  • 2018 – 2,322,271
  • 2017 – 2,316,541   
 
According to the chart, it appears we stopped heading over there for vacation when we did.

At least we got to fish the rivers before the invasion of humans ... I even remember fishing Buffalo Ford when there were only a few other guys on the water and the mud volcano area had a single car pullout.
 
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