Everything that you have heard about the crowds around the roads, the bear/bison/elk traffic jams, the touristy resort areas, it's all true, and then some.

Everything that you have heard about getting a mile off of the road and seeing the crowds disappear, is also true.

Roosevelt Lodge, in my opinion, is the best in-park alternative for lodging. The staff, both lodging and restaurant, were the most helpful and the most efficient out of any of the lodges that we visited. The food in the restaurant was also the best out of several that we tried. We stayed at both Canyon and Roosevelt on this trip, but stopped at Mammoth and the Lake. We did not even get close to Old "Hateful" as one Roosevelt staff member called it.

It's a small thing, but the bacon at Roosevelt Lodge was perfect every time!

The Beartooth Highway, between Red Lodge and the Northeast entrance, through The Beartooth Mountains..... very cool!

The two most useful pieces of "non-mandatory" equipment that we brought along were a good, lightweight hiking stick or trekking pole, and a water bladder with a drinking tube. The trekking pole was very helpful on the steep downhills and when bushwacking on steep slopes. The water bladders, we had two 70 ouncers and one 90 ouncer between three people, made it very easy to hydrate on the go, definitely easier then stopping, pulling out a water bottle etc.

Outlaws, The Best Pizza in the West??? Yeah right, get this, after hiking the Yellowstone River Trail, we were looking for a place to pig out on pizza and maybe a little beer. The cook and the hostess at this place have a big screaming fight when we walk in and the cook refuses to make any pizza.......

Bogarts restaurant in Red Lodge, good Mexican food, K-Bar in Gardiner, good pizza and cold micro-brewery beer on tap after hiking the Yellowstone River Trail!

People ARE as stupid as you think they are, standing 5 feet from a mother bison and her calf and sneaking through the woods to get a closer picture of a black bear.....