fly or drive to yellowstone from seattle?
 

I have a week off and want to go to yellowstone from Seattle. Should I fly or Drive there?
we are a family of 4 with 2 boys, 5 and 11.

It's at least a 13-hour drive each way. Would you overnight somewhere in each direction? If yes, consider that you'd spend more days on the road than you would in Yellowstone.

Have you priced airfares and car rentals?

If you're thinking of doing this trip in the next few weeks, do you have lodging reservations?

When is the trip? Do you have reservations for a place to stay at Yellowstone? If you mean this summer, as in soon, it is super busy at all the parks you'll need to make plans, if you haven't already before heading off anywhere. Fly or drive is your choice. Do you have a car here in Seattle? Can you get a rental car for the park if you fly?

suze, in seattle (posting at the same time as Jean)

"I have a week off" sounds like this is a spur of the moment trip -- or at least in the next few weeks. If so, I'd forget the whole idea of Yellowstone. Airfares are very high this summer and you'd need 4 seats - and rental cars are sold out/totally unavailable in a lot of places. Plus a lot of accommodations have been booked up for ages. So before you get all excited about Yellowstone, do some searching for hotels for your dates - IF you do find something appropriate, then you can book flights. A rental car might actually be the hardest thing to nail down.

(IMO Driving makes no sense when you have so little time -- basically 4 days of your one week trip would just be in transit to and from. That might be doable with just a couple, but being stuck in the back seat for 4 full day could end up with some pretty unhappy kids.)

Look at Southwest they fly into Bozeman now which is about as close to Yellowstone as you can get. Do see if there are rental cars available there for a price that will not break the budget.

Your other option is to take the Amtrak Empire Builder from Seattle to Whitefish Montana and rent a car there. You could also include a trip through Glacier NP before heading to Yellowstone. The train leaves Seattle at 4:40PM and is in Whitefish before 8AM Mountain time the next morning.

We just returned from Yellowstone. It was extremely busy. Finding a parking spot at the attractions in the park sometimes wasn't easy. We stayed in both Gardiner, MT and West Yellowstone, MT. Both towns were full of people. I made reservations months ago. Getting food was met with long waits. Dining in the park was crazy. Just to get ice cream required a long line. Luckily we had a cooler and brought our own food and drinks.

I booked a car through Hertz 6 months ago. My rate for a week was $680. The current rates are $1500 or more, if you can find a car. We arrived early in Bozeman and had to wait until the time of our original reservation to get the car. They were trying to get everybody to upgrade to an SUV for more money. I was told, and heard the same thing being told to others at the counter, that having an SUV in Montana is better than a car.

We flew Southwest. Our return flight on Saturday, July 31 was scheduled to leave Bozeman at 8 AM. We received a text around 10 Friday night that it had been delayed until 4:30 PM. Luckily we still had our rental car until 4 that day. When we arrived at the airport it was extremely busy. Apparently there had been lots of flight changes. There was only one TSA person checking ID's. They only had one line scanning personal items, but finally opened a 2nd. When we finally got through security it was unclear which gate to go to. Our flight was not on the monitor. Bozeman is a nice airport, but they don't appear to be prepared for the increase in passengers this year. I presume with Southwest now flying there the volume of passengers has increased.

If time or money wasn't an issue, I would say drive, with an overnight stay in Spokane or Coeur d'Alene. The I-90 is gorgeous.

Only a week? Honestly, I would forget about trying to go to Yellowstone. Stick to the state of Washington. You'll find plenty of stuff to fill up a week. 4 Days in Seattle plus daytrips to Mt. Rainier & Bainbridge Island gets you to 6 days already. Seattle has pretty good public transit, so you'd only have to rent a car for the days you're driving out of the city.