Mountain West

You can only say “wow” so many times before you’re just left speechless! The mountain west has to be one of the most underrated places to visit, especially if you love the outdoors. Montana and Wyoming might not have the allure of more popular destinations like New York or California, but we have a hard time thinking of a better trip. Over the course of a week, we went to Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Grand Teton National Park. We stopped in beautiful small towns like Whitefish, MT and Jackson Hole, WY along our travels, ate at some hidden gems, and were lucky enough to see a slew of animals: grizzly bears, black bears, elk, deer, bighorn sheep, beaver, mountain goats, a bald eagle, a wolf and a family of moose! 

If you’re a nature lover, going to these 3 parks in such a short period of time might be a sensory overload. Each park already has so much to offer, but we went in the fall during the rut for moose and elk, and while the leaves were changing colors. The weather was perfect for the entire trip! We watched the sunrise from Going to the Sun Road, drove across Yellowstone-and-back in 1 day, and watched a moose family roam the hills in the Tetons! We skipped rocks at Lake McDonald, hiked Avalanche Lake, stopped at creeks and rivers and basically drove around in amazement the whole time! The Mountain West needs to be at the top of every nature lover’s list.

Logistics

Accommodations – We’re not budget travelers … we’re deal-finders! We’ve stayed at really nice places for dirt cheap. We like to find good value when booking a hotel or Airbnb (we look for places that are clean, comfortable and safe). Going into this trip, we knew that some of the areas would be expensive; but when we were looking at the rates for the dates of our trip, the prices in places like Jackson Hole were incredibly high! When we noticed it’d be $500 for a Hampton Inn, we opted to stay a little further away, in a much nicer place, for about 30-40% less. 

Food – We were in these areas right before they were closing for the season, so sometimes restaurants wouldn’t have food because delivery trucks had stopped service. At one restaurant, the hostess gave us a menu, but when the waitress got to our table, she asked, “why did she give you that? All we have is grilled cheese and tomato soup!” That being said, we were still able to find some restaurants that were out of this world:

• Abruzzo Italian Kitchen (Whitefish, MT)
• Loula’s Cafe (Whitefish, MT)
• Annie’s Thai Kitchen (Jackson Hole, WY)
• The Buffalo Bar (West Yellowstone, MT)

Transportation – We flew into Montana on a 1 way flight and booked an SUV that we would drop off in Salt Lake City, Utah. For some reason, maybe demand, renting the car in Montana was $500 cheaper than all other options. It worked out for us because Glacier National Park is basically near the Canadian border; so, we flew to the furthest point of the trip first, then navigated South before dropping the car and having a shorter flight home from Utah.