Summer vacation plans, maybe goin to Big Sky country--Yellowstone
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kaba said:
The guide that I am reading said that one of their fondest memories of eating was at the Lodge, but they also conceded that if you were going to be there for an extended stay (4 or more days) that you wouldn't want to eat there every night. But to that I'd just say, "duh".
Last time we stayed at PO French Quarter was in 2010 when they were finishing a total room remodel. We had a new room and it was very nice. Riverside is considered a "sister" resort and you can share all amenities between the two. Riverside is huge and has 4 or 5 bus stops internally. It is a beautiful place and we have eaten there as well as used the pool, playground, rented bikes and took the carriage ride.ALAYMAN said:Tentatively, we had narrowed the moderates down to a couple, and the Port Orleans Riverside was one of them (but the French Quarter was also in view). The only slight negative we read about the Cajun themed lodging was that though the outside was well done, the inside theming/appointments weren't that exclusively tied to the well-done outside of the buildings. In the end of things, that's not that big of a deal though. We are mainly looking for something clean, convenient to the attractions, reasonably priced (I laugh out loud that I even type that
The sit-down restaurants at Wilderness Lodge are good, but we rarely utilize the full restaurants because they usually require reservations. Occasionally we will make reservations at one of the character breakfast buffets, but we are not big eaters so restaurants are not on the top of our to-do list.
Unsolicited info- we have stayed a few times at the Fort Wilderness cabins and really enjoyed it. Ft. Wilderness has campsite areas as well as "cabins."
I think you asked about driving to the parking lot (known as the Ticket & Transportation area) or taking a boat to MK from Wilderness Lodge. Much easier to take the boat. But I haven't been during really busy times, so I would imagine it could take a while to get to MK on the boat if the line at the dock is long and you have to wait for the next boat.
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JrChurch said:Last time we stayed at PO French Quarter was in 2010 when they were finishing a total room remodel. We had a new room and it was very nice. Riverside is considered a "sister" resort and you can share all amenities between the two. Riverside is huge and has 4 or 5 bus stops internally. It is a beautiful place and we have eaten there as well as used the pool, playground, rented bikes and took the carriage ride.ALAYMAN said:Tentatively, we had narrowed the moderates down to a couple, and the Port Orleans Riverside was one of them (but the French Quarter was also in view). The only slight negative we read about the Cajun themed lodging was that though the outside was well done, the inside theming/appointments weren't that exclusively tied to the well-done outside of the buildings. In the end of things, that's not that big of a deal though. We are mainly looking for something clean, convenient to the attractions, reasonably priced (I laugh out loud that I even type that
The sit-down restaurants at Wilderness Lodge are good, but we rarely utilize the full restaurants because they usually require reservations. Occasionally we will make reservations at one of the character breakfast buffets, but we are not big eaters so restaurants are not on the top of our to-do list.
Unsolicited info- we have stayed a few times at the Fort Wilderness cabins and really enjoyed it. Ft. Wilderness has campsite areas as well as "cabins."
I think you asked about driving to the parking lot (known as the Ticket & Transportation area) or taking a boat to MK from Wilderness Lodge. Much easier to take the boat. But I haven't been during really busy times, so I would imagine it could take a while to get to MK on the boat if the line at the dock is long and you have to wait for the next boat.
Thanks again for the helpful/resourceful info.
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My husband's favorite is Wilderness Lodge its the first restaurant as you enter its for kids/adults. They have the kids run around the room on a horsey stick...don't ask for ketchup everyone will give you there bottle...the food is great! Any of the outlet stores are great also.......we have an outlet stores less than a mile from me 8)
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Sherryh said:
Had a great time at Disney, with a heaping helping of enormously humongous crowds of people at every turn, but that's to be expected I suppose. Next year, Yellowstone (and nature, rather than concrete
), here we come!
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Well, it's only been 3 short years since we thought about going to Yellowstone, but we finally pulled the trigger and have our tickets to fly into Denver and an itinerary sketched out. The real truth is, I had planned this trip 12 years ago with just me and ALAYWIFE but the Lord altered those plans by the surprise arrival of ALAYboy. That was a wonderful cancellation of vacation plans! But to say we are excited now about seeing Yellowstone would be a massive understatement. 
Does anybody else have summer plans? Where to? And if you've been around Denver and the Rockies would you go to Rocky Mountain National Park or would you go to Pikes Peak?
since we thought about going to Yellowstone, but we finally pulled the trigger and have our tickets to fly into Denver and an itinerary sketched out. The real truth is, I had planned this trip 12 years ago with just me and ALAYWIFE but the Lord altered those plans by the surprise arrival of ALAYboy. That was a wonderful cancellation of vacation plans! But to say we are excited now about seeing Yellowstone would be a massive understatement. Does anybody else have summer plans? Where to? And if you've been around Denver and the Rockies would you go to Rocky Mountain National Park or would you go to Pikes Peak?
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ALAYMAN said:Well, it's only been 3 short years
Just don't do anything dumb.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3087749/71-year-old-tourist-cheats-death-falling-backwards-Yellowstone-National-Park-canyon-taking-picture.html
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/travel/yellowstone-woman-bison-attack-selfie/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/us/man-falls-into-hot-spring-yellowstone.html
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This is 2017..my wife and I have been married 33 years and NEVER have taken a vacation just for ourselves. We are considering going to TEXAS, or possibly back down to Savannah, where we went for our honeymoon. We loved Savannah, but we've both wanted for years to go to Texas. We have a lot of friends and acquaintances that live or have lived in Texas and have given us some very good places to go there, especially since we both like history so much. Man, oh man, how a vacation would be something we've been wanting to do for a long time. If we took one, we could mark it off of our "bucket list"! 
ALAYMAN said:Well, it's only been 3 short years
Does anybody else have summer plans? Where to? And if you've been around Denver and the Rockies would you go to Rocky Mountain National Park or would you go to Pikes Peak?
Have a good time - even in summer, it gets COLD up at Yellowstone at night.
As I recall, there is a COG rail to go up to Pike's Peak - it's good to do once. RMNP has plenty of trails to hike, plus, there are the tourist towns (Estes Park, and Grand Lake) at each end of the Park that are fun to walk around.
Even if you don't take any trails, RMNP will take most of a day, if you go to the high point and then spend much time at all in either of the tourist towns.
My recollection of Pike's Peak was that it was about a half-day event.
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Walt said:
It was 105 degrees in South Dakota on our first day as we travelled from Mount Rushmore over to Cody, and 100 in Cody the next day. But as I told my wife, I was pretty sure that Yellowstone had its own climate, when we got there for the duration of 5 days we never saw a temperature go above 82, and most were in the upper 70s. It was truly refreshing.
Walt said:
We never made it to Estes in the 9 days we were out west. Spent most of our time in Yellowstone and the Tetons, but finished up in Colorado Springs/Pikes Peak. Quick story....
On Thursday last week we went to Manitou/Colorado Springs. Mrs ALAYMAN wanted to see the Cliff Dwellings and Garden of the gods (as did I) but mostly I wanted to go up the 14k elevation to the Peak. We knew that some rainy weather might be moving in later in the day, and despite that we put off the Pikes Peak trip until after the lower elevation sightseeing. At about 3:30 we started up the mountain. The guy at the check-in station at the bottom said that we would only be able to go up about 2/3 of the way (to about 11k feet) because of bad weather at the top, and that if we chose to go up that there would be no refund of our money (just $35) if it didn't open up to the top by the time we got to that closure point. He then said if we waited for about an hour it *might* clear up and the road to the top would open, so we killed some time looking at stuff down at Colorado Springs and came back in an hour.
An hour later at 4:45, same story, no opening above 11k, and daylight was dwindling. After 6pm nobody was allowed to even start up the mountain, so off we went. I've been in the Smokey Mountains quite a bit, and you can get in trouble there if you don't watch what you're doing, but Pikes Peak is more than double the elevation of those. As we meandered up the mountain to the 11k lodge stopping point the weather didn't get any better, and though the drive was pretty, it was really just ho-hum, nothing breath-taking or vastly different than much of what we'd seen elsewhere. When we got out of the car at the 11k point to go in the lodge and nose around before heading back a ranger came out of the little shack checkpoint in the road and said quickly "if you're goin' up get goin' now!" ALAYboy was stoked and jumped back in the car for the trek up the mountain to the summit!
About one mile into that part of the drive the road started ascending rapidly. The switchbacks came more and more regularly, 180 degrees folding back on one another, causing me to come to near complete stops as I rounded the curve in our front-wheel drive rental car. Worse than the rapid climb and multiple switchbacks, there often was no guardrail, and the drop off was literally only about ONE FOOT from the edge of the road!
Bad went to worse as within 2 miles (with 6 to go) we ran into fog/clouds that left us with visibility no further than one car length in front of us. ALAYboy was plum skeered, and ALAYMAN wasn't exactly feeling all warm and fuzzy either. When we finally got to the top, we didn't even know we had made it because visibility was so poor that we couldn't see the summit station and plateau when it was right in front of us. The temperature was 40 degrees, with 40 mile an hour winds, and sleet started pelting us! ALAYWIFE got out to go in the station, and 15 minutes later she returned, only to have the door literally fly out of her hand and smack her square in the face when the wind caught hold of it and whipped it into her forehead. So now I'm without my co-pilot, as she was dazed and confused. I was thinking about telling the ranger that he could just push that rental car over the side as far as I was concerned because he was going to drive us down to the bottom, when he pulled up beside us in his 4X4 and told us "it ain't gonna get any better, you might as well head on down". :'( We did pass one vehicle (a Jeep CJ) on the way down, and that dude was driving like a maniac up the mountain. We crawled at 5mph down that mountain for the first 8 miles, until visibility cleared up, and then everybody took a deep breath and sighed a big sigh of relief. Other than that, Pikes Peak was great.
Crazy as it sounds, I found out at church yesterday that we had traversed the mountain just one week after their annual Broodmoor International Hill Climb Race of Pikes Peak. Five people have perished over the course of that race. Arenaline junkies fer sure.
