Whew!
Shae and I have made many mistakes on our road trip so far (hence this being number 11 in the series!), but we recently made a mistake that would’ve been our worst one yet.
My parents are coming to visit from the UK next month and they’ll be joining us on the road trip for 6-7 weeks. We’ll be traveling out west so that they can see the Grand Canyon, all five of Utah’s National Parks and more.
About halfway through their visit we’d planned to visit Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park. We planned out their visit to ensure we could fit everything in, then found a couple of Airbnbs – one place for us to stop at on our drive up there and a larger place to stay at just outside of Yellowstone National Park as Shae’s dad and his girlfriend were planning to come join us out there too.
It turns out that there was a fairly significant problem with our plans though.
The roads into Yellowstone and Grand Teton would be closed.
We’d suspected something was up when using Google Maps to check how far our drive would be from our prospective Airbnb into the park. It seemed to be sending us on a circuitous route rather than the most direct way of getting there. Google Maps allows you to adjust the date and time you’ll be leaving to account for traffic, so we played around with the date and that made it seem that April 15 was when the road would be open.
Although that was a few days after Shae, my parents and I were due to arrive, that was the date Shae’s dad and his girlfriend would fly in. We therefore figured we could visit Grand Teton National Park from April 11-14, then visit Yellowstone National Park once all six of us were there. As a result, we went ahead and booked the Airbnb.
When booking a property on Airbnb, it prompts you to send a message to the property owner. In my message I mentioned we’d be visiting with our parents so that we could see Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Shortly after that I received a message from the Airbnb host which saved us.
She let us know that the road into Yellowstone National Park wouldn’t open until April 17 which would only leave us with a day or two to visit there. Even worse, she mentioned that Grand Teton National Park wouldn’t be open until the end of April, so we wouldn’t get to see that at all.
Traveling all that way for one or two days in Yellowstone didn’t seem worth it, especially seeing as Shae’s dad and his girlfriend would be spending quite a bit on flights to get there. We therefore decided to cancel our plans for now as they hadn’t booked their flights yet. Thankfully we’d only just booked the Airbnbs, so we were able to cancel those for a full refund that same night, which meant that financially we weren’t any worse off.
This did result in a bit of a dilemma though. If we weren’t going to visit Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, what would we do during that time instead? We’d already booked a bunch of stuff before and after that, so we were restricted with our dates and where we’d be able to get to. I spent the rest of the evening looking at our options and think I’ve come up with an itinerary that’ll be fun and a good replacement for our previous plans.
What will be doing instead? You’ll have to wait and see! We checked with my parents and they’re happy for us to keep our replacement plans a secret so that they can be surprised. We’re still planning on visiting Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park this year; that’ll be in May after my parents have gone back to the UK, although Shae’s dad and girlfriend will still come and join us.
Lesson Learned
When heading up north in the winter and spring, be sure to check if attractions will actually be open. I’d assumed that huge attractions like Yellowstone National Park would be accessible year-round by car, but that’s apparently not the case!
glad the air bnb helped with that … in April and possibly up till June Yellowstone still gets snow … as a mattrr of fact you likely to get some in Arizona and Utah when there.
At least that means we shouldn’t get too dehydrated while hiking in Arizona & Utah!
We lived out in Idaho for several months, I remember in June getting some snow. We moved there in April and I almost went off the road, during a snow storm, on the way there! There were parts of the Interstate closed going toward those areas, due to the massive amounts of snow.
I hope we miss that!