How To Visit Expensive Jackson Hole On A Budget

Our family in front of the Grand Tetons, Wyoming

         This past summer, we spent a week visiting the National Parks in Montana and Wyoming. Think Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons. Absolutely beautiful. But wow, expensive. And Jackson Hole, Wyoming has been named the most unaffordable place to live in the entire US. 
         So what's a family of five supposed to do? I checked the chains in the area to see if we could use award points, all sold out. Argh. If you get lucky, there is a Hampton Inn and Suites, Super 8, Motel 6 and another Hilton in Jackson. The area is divided into Jackson Hole and Teton Village. The better ski area according to the locals is at Teton Village, but the town is in Jackson Hole. Teton Village feels very much like a small resort at the bottom of the ski run. 
I checked airbnb.com, but the rates were outrageous. So then I searched hostels and bam, I found The Hostel in Teton Village. 
Now, I stayed at plenty of hostels back in my 20's when I backpacked across Europe. But I never thought about staying at a hostel with my family. 
But guess what, we loved it. 

The Hostel at Teton Village, Wyoming

The Hostel is located right at the bottom of the ski run next to the Four Seasons. Yep, right next door. But we paid $130 per night for a room for five people. I am pretty sure you would not be able to stay in the closet at the Four Seasons for that price. 
The Hostel had FREE coffee, tea, and hot chocolate plus a pool table, access to a shared refrigerator, laundry facilities and a lounge. There were also barbecues available. They stated that they had kitchen facilities as well, but all we saw was a camping stove. 
The room was small, but we had a private bathroom and fresh linens. 
It felt safe. There were lots of families and kids. In the winter, they had places to store your skis, snowboards, and boots. The rooms did not have air conditioning, but do have heat. 
We picked up breakfast items, sandwich items at the Albertsons in Jackson and a pizza to go for dinner. 

Best part was seeing moose on our hike at Jenni Lake

Activities we enjoyed included river rafting with Lewis and Clark down the Snake River. We paid $450 for this tour, but erased it with our Capital One Venture card points. 

Plus we took the boat across Jenni Lake (no reservations needed, boats depart every 15 minutes) and hiked a few miles to Inspiration Point and saw moose! Definitely a highlight of the trip. 

River Rafting on the Snake River

The Virginia Diner had a great Wyoming breakfast with fresh biscuits for $10 per person. 

We liked The Hostel so much that we are going to try staying at another one in Patagonia, Chile next year. 

Stay tuned! 

****Please use the referral links included in this post and help support our blog. 

Wow! How You Can Visit Three National Parks In A Week

Our family of 5 in front of the famous Yellowstone National Park sign

We just got back from an epic National Park trip.....Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons. Yep, all 3 packed into a week and a minivan. I'm going to show you how we did it, the route we took and how I think it could be improved. Plus where we used points and miles and how much this trip actually cost. 

First, this is an amazing vacation. We have traveled all over the world as a family. I am at 51 countries and counting, my 13-year-old has already visited 15 countries and 5 continents. But these parks blew me away. The beauty and the variety of topography, animals, and plants are extraordinary. No wonder these parks were designated protected back in the 1800's. 

Now let's talk specifics and flights. You should always start with flights when you travel because if you use points/miles, your dates need to be flexible. When you are trying to book for an entire family, you are talking multiple seats on the same flight, flexibility is key. 

Since I earned the Southwest Airlines companion pass (buy 1 ticket get 1 free for 2 years) in February, I had enough points to fly my entire family to somewhere close to the parks. But where is the best starting point and ending point? Southwest Airlines offers a route search tool so you can see which airports are available. 

You can see that the airports around the parks are Spokane, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Denver. When I priced out the different cities and flights from San Diego, Spokane and Salt Lake City offered the best prices and routes. And since we wanted to visit Glacier National Park, the farther north we could start the better. 
We flew into Spokane, picked up a rental car and then drove to Kalispell, Montana. It's about a 4.5 hour drive from the airport. But the last 1.5 hours are a bit hairy in the dark so I recommend arriving into Spokane earlier in the day or spending the night in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, a super cute lake town. 

Tip: Fly into Spokane early in the day

We used 15,000 Wyndham points to stay at the Super 8 in Kalispell, Montana. There is a La Quinta in Kalispell as well which is now owned by Wyndham and looks nicer, but it was sold out. The Super 8 was actually just fine. The hotel provided a rollaway bed and breakfast. We were there for 7 hours so it was perfect. 
We left Kalispell, MT at 7am and drove on the highway for 2 hours which follows the park to the south. We had a reservation on the boat at Many Glacier for 11am so unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to take Going To The Sun road through the middle of the park.

Tip: plan your trip so you have time to drive the Sun Road. 

In my specific park post, I'll go into details about Many Glacier and the boat trip. By the time we left Many Glacier, it was dinner time. Fortunately, I had booked a hotel in Browning, Montana. I got one of the last rooms at the Glacier Peaks Hotel And Casino. I booked the room through hotels.com (if you use my referral link, you will get $50 off your first hotels.com booking). Since I have the Capital One Venture card, I earned 10x points on the stay and it gets me one night closer to a FREE night in the hotels.com loyalty program. 
The hotel was fine, had a sofa bed so our family of 5 fit in one room, and breakfast was good. But there is nothing to do in Browning and we kept finding that we headed back to East Glacier. 

Tip: stay in East Glacier instead of Browning. 

The next morning, we drove across Montana to Gardiner. It's a 5.5 hour beautiful drive. This is when the minivan came in handy. It had lots of USB ports and lots of seats. There are some hot springs along the way if you choose to stop. We drove straight to Gardiner which is located minutes from the northeast entrance gate to Yellowstone. 

Our family at the Yellowstone arch

Gardiner is a lovely town just outside the gate. We arrived in time to check in to our Airbnb.com, pick up some dinner and head to the river hot spring inside the park. I'll go into detail about this in my specific Yellowstone National Park post. There is a Super 8 in Gardiner that you can book for just 15,000 points. But it was already sold out so we booked an Airbnb.com which I charged to my Capital One Venture card and erased with points. We spent the next day on a private tour in the Lamar Valley, highly recommend this one, and the following day, we drove through the park. I bought the tour with my Capital One Venture card and erased the purchase. 

Tip: plan early so you can book your hotel with points

We spent the day in the park and exited Yellowstone through the south gate arriving in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in time for dinner. You will definitely want to read my blog post on Jackson Hole. This town is the most unaffordable city in the US. We stayed in a hostel which was awesome and I'll review it in my post. 

View from the top of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

We spent the next day in Jackson walking the town and river rafting. The following day, we hiked near Jenny Lake and drove to Salt Lake City. We spent the night at a Marriott near the airport using some of the $300 credit from our Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant credit card. The following day, we flew home on Southwest with tickets bought with points. 

Our itinerary looked like this: 

Day 1 - Fly to Spokane, drive to Kalispell, Montana

Day 2 - Glacier National Park 

Day 3 - Drive to Gardiner, Montana

Day 4 - Lamar Valley 

Day 5 - Yellowstone National Park 

Day 6 - Grand Tetons 

Day 7 - Grand Tetons, drive to Salt Lake City 

Day 8 - Fly home 

For hotels: 

• Kalispell on Wyndham points 
• Browning, Montana booked through hotels.com
• Gardiner, Montana booked through Airbnb.com and erased with Capital One Venture points 
• Jackson Hole paid for a hostal
• Salt Lake City used a Marriott credit 

After using points and miles, this trip cost about $2,000 out of pocket for 5 people including the rental car, hotels, food, gas and experiences. Not bad to see our beautiful national parks. Look for my posts with details about each park. If you decide to book on hotels.com or Airbnb.com, please use my referral links. You will get a credit on your first booking and support this blog. 

Thank you!