BabuSoge

Part 1 — Travel Preparation, Cost, and Planning Details

Actual Dates of Travel: June 29, 2022 — July 6, 2022

We (28F, 32 M), together with the parents (~60-year-olds) went on a 7-day trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton NPs for the 4th of July weekend from the Twin Cities, MN.

We started planning for the trip around the end of January/early February. This was basically a dual intent trip — a graduation celebration and a trip with parents who were visiting us from India.

Pre-Travel Arrangements

Tickets: We had no desire to drive 16 hours to Montana from the Twin Cities although we are aware that is a popular thing to do. Often those who drive from the Twin Cities area go via Badlands and Mt Rushmore. We also valued the time we spent at the NPs more and didn’t want to spend 2.5 days out of the 7-day trip in driving to and from the area. Moreover, there’s so much to do in South Dakota, that we felt it deserved its own separate trip. If driving appeals to you, then the Twin Cities- South Dakota-Montana road trip route is something you might want to consider.

Our round-trip tickets were booked via Sun Country Airlines and it turned out to be a total of 988 USD including 2 checked bags (one checked bag for my parents and another one for my husband and me) for the 4 of us. Sun Country very conveniently flew (flies) twice a week to Jackson Hole, Wy. And at the time of booking, Sun Country flights were a whole lot more reasonable than any other airline (like half the price of others), and it worked out great for our travel dates. We have used Sun Country in the past too, and have had a great experience with them, and feel that they offer great value for travelers in Minnesota to visit several destinations across the US.

Stay: For our trip, we decided that we would spend 3 nights near Grand Teton NP and 3 nights near Yellowstone. For the last night, we decided to stay somewhere closer to Jackson Hole since our return flights were at 10 am Mountain Time from Jackson Hole. After considering several options, as well as factoring distance and costs, we zeroed in on an Airbnb in Victor, ID. The drive to and from Grand Teton Park Entrance is about 35 miles and can take anywhere between 45 mins to an hour. Jackson Hole is somewhere near the halfway point. We didn’t realize at the time that the highway from Victor, ID to Jackson Hole, Wy goes via the Teton Pass which can get clogged due to slow-moving vehicles. But once we were there, we learned to factor that into our travel times on all days, and it wasn’t too much of a hassle.

We chose to stay the next 3 days in Island Park, ID (about 35 mins) from West Yellowstone and spent the last night in Driggs, ID.

Our accommodation costs totaled USD 2275 (across 7 nights and 4 people), averaging 81 USD/per person per night.

Food: Since our Airbnbs all had a fully stocked kitchen complete with pots/pans/utensils and even spices and oil, we planned our meals (a day-by-day chart is included below). We did deviate quite a bit from the chart, but by and large, this chart helped us out to a great extent with regard to deciding the supplies to take with us and picking produce up from local grocery stores.

You may have realized from the chart, that all of us follow a vegetarian diet. This was in part the reason (apart from helping us stay within our budget) for us to prepare a plan of action for our meals. Eating pizza and burger (which is pretty much all that’s available in NP areas for vegetarians) on all 7 days didn’t appeal at all to us.

Based on this table, we came up with two separate lists — one for things to take from home and another for supplied we could buy in Jackson/West Yellowstone. All the items we had to take from home were individually put in zip lock bags (which we could reuse once we got back home) and came together in a small bag that went into our checked luggage.

We shopped for almost all of our food at the Whole Foods store in Jackson Hole. The total cost of all the supplies we bought came to around 200 USD. Eating out (1 lunch ($$), 1 breakfast ($), 2 dinners ($$, $$$) ) cost us about 250 USD, more details on that later, bringing the total cost of meals to 500 USD for the 7-day trip for 4 people. In other words, an average of 16 USD/per person per day.

If cooking is not your thing or if you think that it is too stressful to cook during a trip, this style of travel may not be for you. And trust us when we say this, we also weren’t people who cooked during our trips in the past. However, off late, this seems to be working out the best for us, both in terms of convenience, as well as budget.

Here’s the link to our AirBnb in Island Park(near West Yellowstone) and our AirBnB in Victor, ID (near Jackson Hole/Grand Teton).

Rental Car: We typically opt for Enterprise/National but on this particular occasion, we used Hertz. We paid 375 USD including taxes and fees for the 7-day rental for a mid-size sedan which was very reasonable given the holiday/summer travel surge. Gas cost us about 200 USD.

Total Expenses: Apart from souvenirs, ice creams, and the like, all expenses have been listed individually here. In total, the trip cost us around 4500 USD for 4 people, for 7 days, in other words, 160 USD/per person per day.

Final thoughts: For us, the planning and budgeting for this trip ultimately came down to the need to spend as much time as we could at the parks and lesser travel times to and from the Twin Cities. This meant we had spent a considerable chunk of the budget on flights and therefore, food was one place where we could cost cut substantially. Not only did we save a lot on food, we actually had a ton of fun doing picnic lunches and eating a healthy, balanced diet that was light, and easy on our tummies too! We considered this a great win-win situation and decided to adopt this strategy for our future trips — especially those that are a week or longer.