We are planning to visit montana or yellowstone ntnl park in july. any ideas for itinerary for a one week trip.

thanks.

Where are you coming from? What mode(s) of transport?
Budget? Can you get/afford reservations in a National Park?

Lots of great trip reports on here. Maybe reading a few of those would be a good start?

If you haven't been to Yellowstone or Grand Tetons, I would spend the whole week there. You will lose most of two days in transport so that leaves you 5 days.

I would stay in Yellowstone. It's a long way around the park and having to spend another hour or so getting to the loop road eats up a lot of time.

Try to make reservations ASAP. If there are none, keep calling back--they get cancellations.

Our favorite area to stay in Yellowstone is Canyon because it is centrally located. At this late date, you may have to just take what you get.

You could take a day trip to GT or stay a night. Unless you are doing major hiking, it's more of a drive through park. If you have time, go into Jackson. It has a really neat downtown to walk around in. I've only camped at GT so I can't speak about lodging there.

Some are the sights are time sensitive. For instance, the timed Geysers go off at approximate times. Wildlife are most active early in the morning and early in the evening.

If you have to drive an hour or more to get around that becomes a real issues.

I would suggest as has already been suggested that you start calling and calling and calling for inpark lodging.

Ideally you could get lodging in Canyon (in the middle, close to waterfalls and wildlife), Old Faithful (there's a lot more to this area than Old Faithful alone) and Grand Tetons (maybe Signal Mountain) and the Tetons are beautiful.

There is wildlife around and moderate hiking in most areas.

As already suggested, if you've never been to Yellowstone / Grand Tetons you could easily enjoy a week there.

Yellowstone is great and could occupy all of your time - but if you like to drive and enjoy seeing more majestic country - also try to get up to Glacier in NW Montana for a couple nights.

http://www.nationalparkreservations....FeYERQod10DNfA

If heading to Montana, I would go to Glacier National Park. Both Glacier and Yellowstone are spectacular, but as far as scenery and hiking, I think GNP is better. Here's a list of some of the top hikes I would also recommend: http://www.hikinginglacier.com/glaci...-ten-hikes.htm. The east side of the park is much more scenic, especially Many Glacier. Reservations inside the park are probably hard to get, but there are cabins available outside the park in Baab, St. Mary and East Glacier.

Most of these pictures are geo-tagged for location and might give you some ideas of what to visit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/...57623117942088