Montana & Wyoming (2026)

When I was in 2nd grade my teacher Ms Marshall, would talk to the class about how much she enjoyed visiting Montana in the summer. It was so pretty! The sky was so big! You just have to go! I remember thinking that Montana had to be the wonderful place and surely as an adult I would go there multiple times!

I have a close friend who has a goal to visit all 50 states. I also have the same goal. I had been to 39 states. Montana was one of the 11 states that I hadn't visited.

My family has embraced vacations that include a long roadtrip to see national parks. We've been to Utah / Arizona (2023), Nevada / California (2024) and Miami / Florida Keys (2025) in consecutive years. During those trips we saw 9 national parks (3 per trip) and saw parts of the country widely different than Ohio. 

That preamble leads us to our family's big 2026 trip to Montana & Wyoming. It would be fulfilling my 2nd grade dream, seeing two new states and continuing on the tradition of visiting 3 new national parks every year with our family. I will break this down by section:

Glacier National Park

Glacier ended up being our favorite national park out of the 17 we've visited. It had everything! Amazing hikes, great wildlife, pleasant temperatures, wonderful views, not too crowded, etc. This was the park I was most excited about and we spent 5 days exploring West Glacier, Going To The Sun Road, East Glacier and Many Glacier. My top top tips / experiences:

• Go in the summer - and specifically in July / August. The Going To The Sun Road opens up at a different time each year, but normally it's late June. This was my favorite drive ever (and not just because M did the driving) and you will want to do this. 

• Be prepared for long hikes. We went on a few 2-3 hour hikes and averaged 23k steps a day. A few more details on some of our favorites

• Hike the Hidden Lake Overlook - this is at Logan's Pass in the middle of the Going To The Sun Road and provided amazing wildlife viewing. The hike itself was harder than I expected both in terms of distance and going up a snow-covered mountain. (And yes its was strange to me to be walking on snow in July)

• Hike Avalanche Lake - the payoff at the end is absolutely worth the long hike. Parking was supposed to be tough and most advice was to show up early in order to get a spot. We ended up going in the middle of the day and didn't have any issue finding parking. 

• Buy a boat ticket through the Glacier Park Boat Company at Many Glacier. Take the boat across two small lakes. Then if you want an easy (but still amazing) hike go on the Grinnell Lake Trail. If you want one of my favorite hikes ever then go on the Grinnell Glacier Trail. The whole family did the Grinell Lake hike. L and I did part of the Grinnell Glacier trail. We were extremely tired after all of the hikes, but the views truly can't be beat. Also, we met a nice young Australian couple that we started talking to (he saw my Jazz shirt and wanted to talk about Australian Dante Exum) and it made me wonder if Australians were the nicest people in the world. (Also, how cool is that they were just taking a year off of work and were traveling all around America.)

• If you can stay in the park, stay in the park. This advice is almost always good for national parks. The funny thing is that there was never a line to get into GNP. I'm not sure if we just got lucky because it was busy season (summer). We stayed at the Rising Sun Motor Inn and while it was far from luxury, it was nicer than most of our national park lodging. The room was small but comfortable and there was a great restaurant (Two Dog Flats) that we went to 3 times because it was so good. 

• If you can't stay in the park, Columbia Falls is a cute walkable town only about 20 minutes from the entrance.

• We explored 3 main areas of the park: West Glacier, East Glacier and Many Glacier. Unless you just love driving, it's best to organize your trip so that you aren't criss-crossing from one area to the other. We had a few days in West Glacier (with Columbia Falls as our home base) and then a few days in East Glacier. 

• Many Glacier was my favorite part of the park. West Glacier is more crowded (but still not too crowded....this is far far far from Disney World), East Glacier is more remote and Many Glacier is probably right there in the middle. We enjoyed the snack shop Heidi's and then loved the hikes at Many Glacier. One night we enjoyed a bottle of wine at Many Glacier and then went to see a moose at Fishercap Lake. I wish we had been able to secure lodging at the Many Glacier Hotel. (No offense to Rising Sun - I loved Rising Sun).

• Be ready for bears - you will be told this over and over, but we did have an experience where a black bear walked right in front of us. Thankfully this bear did not care about us at all. 

• You need 3-5 days in Glacier National Park. It's a big park and you don't want to rush it.

• Download Guide Along. This was a recommendation from one of our friends and it was worth the price many times over. Guide Along provides an audio tour of the history of the park and different points of interest. It was super useful - especially since cell phone service is almost non-existent in the park and this allows you to know where to stop. 

• Eat all the huckleberry. Just amazing. We had huckleberry licorice, milkshake, vodka cocktail, cheesecake, pulled pork, crisp, mead and a pie. I loved it all.

• I'm super happy we did not book the red bus tour. They looked fine....but I really appreciate the flexibility of being able to stop and see what we wanted on the going to the sun road. Plus we wouldn't have been able to hike the Hidden Lake Overlook if we were constrained by red bus tour. 

• Planning is key before the trip. You want to make sure you have the right lodging / general idea of what to do. But it's all worth it when you get there.

• White water rafting was very fun and absolutely perfect if you want something thrilling, but not scary. We booked through Wild River Adventures and recommend. 

Yellowstone National Park

I was skeptical visiting Yellowstone because I expected it to be as crowded and overrated as Disney. I was pleasantly incorrect there. Yellowstone was also amazing! It was just one notch below Glacier and solidly came in as our 4th favorite national park. Considering how much we like national parks, the 4th spot is a high honor. My top top tips / experiences:

• Where you stay is even more important than Glacier National Park. Yellowstone is huge. We stayed two nights near the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and one night near Old Faithful. This allowed us to explore different sections of the park.

• There are so many more spots at Yellowstone besides just the famous ones. It seemed like every 5 minutes there was something awesome to see. And just like at Glacier, Guide Along was a worthwhile investment in helping us figure out what we wanted to stop and see.

• It was not worth it to book an early morning wildlife tour. It's expensive ($500 for 4 people) and the tour started at 6:15am. You can see wildlife just driving yourself and save some sleep / $. It was still very cool and our guide was great. 

• The bison were all over the Hayden and Lamar Valleys. Nothing is promised I guess, but it would be hard to miss them. That is another reason I didn't feel like the wildlife tour was necessary.

• It seems like every American should see Glacier & Yellowstone.

• I met Cleveland Cavs center Jarrett Allen at Mammoth Hot Springs area of Yellowstone. He was very nice. I was impressed with how interested he was in the ranger talk - he even answered one of her questions correctly and got a sticker as a reward. 

• Yellowstone is the best national park for senior citizens or people want to walk too much. There are so many sites that are near parking lots or only require short walks. 

• Still we did 23k steps a day at Yellowstone. I guess a bunch of short walks add up.

• Glacier had the best hikes / views, but they were longer. Yellowstone just had so many different stops. There was just so much to do and see.

• Our best meal in the park was at the historic Old Faithful Inn. They had a lunch buffet that was much better than one might expect. 

• They publish projected geyser eruptions. Our favorite was the Castle Geyser. We had to wake up slightly early to go see, but almost had the geyser to ourselves, which was in sharp contrast to Old Faithful. (Still go see Old Faithful)

• The entire walk around Old Faithful was definitely worth the time. The farther you get form Old Faithful the less the crowds. Plus you can build up your appetite for the lunch buffet. 

Grand Teton National Park

Grand Teton was also breathtaking, but suffered from 3 issues: 1) It was crowded - there were some hikes we wanted to do, but couldn't find parking. 2) It was expensive. Teton County has an "extremely high" overall cost of living and that is definitely reflected in the prices at hotels / Airbnbs 3) It had the misfortune of following Glacier / Yellowstone 

• We prioritized sleep with a 10 year old and a 13 year old over getting to hikes early in the morning. This was completely fine at Glacier National Park. We had no trouble parking there. We weren't as lucky at Grand Teton. Of all 3 national parks we visited, Grand Teton was by far the most crowded. If you want to do Jenny Lake or any of the other big hikes here then wake up early. 

• Grand Teton also looks better in the morning than the afternoon / evening. So again wake up early.

• We did a boat tour on the snake river through the Barker-Ewing Trips. It was relaxing and the company was flexible in us changing out tour time...but it was also underwhelming. With that and the "morning with the wild things" tour I just feel like we didn't need to spend the $ on tours to see wildlife.

• Jackson Hole is extremely expensive. It's nice, but because of the cost 1 or 2 night was enough.

• The best meal of the trip (easily) was The Bistro in downtown Jackson. 

• Jackson Hole Playhouse was absolutely outstanding. They did Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Definitely worth it. The Bistro and then the play was one of our favorite nights of the trip.

• While Glacier & Yellowstone had so many things to see, Grand Teton was seeing the same mountain range at different spots. But thankfully it was quite the view:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Salt Lake City

We ended the trip with one night in Salt Lake City. We stayed at The Grand Hotel (we stayed there in 2023 and loved it) and went to a Salt Lake Bees game. No notes there - just a fun time enjoying the hotel pool and a minor league baseball game. 

Overall this was one of my favorite trips ever. I absolutely LOVED Glacier National Park and will want to go back.