A family road trip to Yellowstone sounds expensive.

There are hotels, campground fees, gas, food, park admission and all those little costs that seem to add up every time you stop somewhere.

But one of the reasons I love road trips is that they can also be surprisingly affordable compared with flying a family of four somewhere and paying for hotels every night.

For our Yellowstone road trip, we decided to combine hotels, camping, points, discounts, and a lot of driving to keep the costs reasonable.

And while Yellowstone itself was the star of the trip, we also added stops in Washington, Montana and Wyoming along the way.

Here is what we spent, what we saved and whether I think Yellowstone is worth visiting with kids.

Why Yellowstone With Kids?

Yellowstone was one of those destinations that had been on my list for a long time. I’ve been there before when I was younger, but I wanted to show my kids.

There is always something else to look for so it won’t be just looking at mountains.

One minute you’re driving through a forest, the next you’re stopping because there’s a herd of bison beside the road.

That makes Yellowstone particularly well suited to a family road trip.

The National Park Pass

One of the first expenses we had to account for was park admission.

We spent $80 USD on a National Parks pass.

However, there is an important 2026 update that Canadian visitors should know about.

The U.S. National Park Service changed its fee structure for 2026. The America the Beautiful Annual Pass is now $250 USD for non-U.S. residents, while the $80 annual pass is for U.S. citizens and residents. Non-U.S. residents visiting Yellowstone without the appropriate annual pass can also face a $100 per-person nonresident fee.

Our $80 expense reflects the pass we purchased for our trip (I bought it in December 2025), but current Canadian travelers should check the National Park Service rules before budgeting their trip.

Yellowstone’s regular private-vehicle entrance fee is currently $35, and that standard pass is valid for seven consecutive days.

Since we’re driving from Vancouver, Spokane was a natural first overnight stop.

Our First Stop: Spokane

Our first stay was a hotel in Spokane, it was $137.78 USD.

For a family road trip, I like breaking up the drive rather than trying to cover an enormous distance in one day. 6-7 hours on the road is my upper limit, I think.

Yes, stopping overnight adds another hotel night.

We checked out riverfront park in Spokane, and my kids ran through the largest urban waterfall in the United States and also checked out the largest Radio Flyer wagon in the world.

There was a really nice playground for the kids in Spokane as well.

Missoula

Our next stop was Missoula, Montana.

We stayed at the Fairfield Inn Missoula

The important part from a personal-finance perspective was that we saved approximately $319 CAD on this hotel.

We saved money on this hotel using one of our Marriott Free Night Certificates, worth 35,000 Marriott Bonvoy points. Here’s my review of the card.

The Fairfield Inn had two waterslides which my kids loved. I think my son counted 50 trips down the slide. One of the waterslides was too fast for my liking but I’m glad my kids liked them.

The breakfast was pretty good. I love free breakfast!

We stocked up on groceries at Winco in Missoula for camping portion of the trip.

We also checked out this cool playground called Dragon Hollow Playground.

Camping at West Yellowstone KOA

Once we reached the Yellowstone area, we switched from hotels to camping.

Our stay at the West Yellowstone KOA cost:

$78.84 USD

Camping is one of the easiest ways to reduce the accommodation cost of a national park trip.

Hotels near Yellowstone can become extremely expensive, especially during peak summer (I had a brief glance at hotels in West Yellowstone and they started at $300 USD).

KOA is a private campground. We “upgraded” to a larger tent site, but it was still in very close proximity to our neighbours. I think i could hear their conversation (and they could hear ours). With all the noise, my kids had trouble falling asleep. I think they went to bed at 10pm that evening.

The next morning we got into the long line up to get inside Yellowstone National Park.

Camping Inside Yellowstone: Canyon Campground

We also stayed at Canyon Campground two nights for $103 USD.

This was one of the stays I was particularly excited about.

Staying inside Yellowstone eliminates a lot of unnecessary driving. I’m glad we didn’t stay in West KOA for Yellowstone, because that would be a lot of driving.

Yellowstone is enormous.

It took several hours to drive between the park’s entrances (for example, from the South entrance to the West entrance), so where you stay can have a major impact on your experience.

This is something I think families should consider when planning a Yellowstone trip.

Canyon campground was great. It was very quiet and secluded compared to the KOA. Our son even saw a bear at the campsite (well not ours thankfully, but a few hundred feet away). The campsite is well equipped with heated bathrooms and had a room to wash your dishes. All the campsites encouraged you to be bear proof.

The only downside was that it poured one night and rainwater was leaking into our tent. As we do more and more camping road trips, we will be better prepared with a canopy or tarp to go over our tent.

One evening it was pouring so much I didn’t feel like cooking (we didn’t have a canopy to cover the cooking area) we went to the Canyon Campground area to grab some food. I had the worst bowl of Vietnamese pho noodles for $22 CAD. It’s still a nice food court area, just don’t get the pho noodles. The half chicken option was pretty good and the macaroni and cheese tasted pretty good.

Yellowstone National Park

We did the usual stuff you would do at Yellowstone- the Grand Prismatic Spring (the largest hot spring in the United States) and walked around the board walk. We didn’t walk to the overhead viewpoint area, that looked like a long walk. I wasn’t prepared for the lack of parking when viewing these sites.

We also saw the Norris Geyser Basin, mud pots, and Old Faithful (of course).

In the evening was probably the wildlife highlight, Hayden Valley at dusk. We saw so many bison, even bison crossing the road in front of us. This was a few weeks after we watched the video of the older man getting bucked by a bison at a campsite, so we were vigilant about making sure our children were safe in the car. Some people got out of their car to look at the bison which I thought was quite dangerous.

The next morning, we checked out the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It was very beautiful and doesn’t even look real. We started a hike down but realized it wasn’t a good idea to be having the kids hike in Crocs, so we turned back.

Our kids participated in ranger activities and even got a Yellowstone National Park ranger badge.

Grand Teton National Park

After Yellowstone, we continued south toward Grand Teton National Park.

We stayed at Colter Bay Campground for $68 USD.

Colter Bay is a particularly nice stop because you’re right in the Grand Teton environment.

It was a beautiful lake (Jackson Lake), probably one of the nicest lakes I have been to. It was nice and hot so our soaked gear from the night before got to dry off.

I also drove 15 minutes with the kids to see Oxbow bend, which is a photographic spot at sunset.

Fairmont Hot Springs Resort

After several nights of camping, we were ready for a good shower:

Fairmont Hot Springs Resort near Anaconda.

The cash price was $405 CAD per night, but we saved money using our Scene+ Points.

After sleeping in tents for four nights, having a comfortable hotel room and access to hot springs felt like a completely different vacation. There was another waterslide that my kids enjoyed here.

Back to Spokane

Eventually, we made our way back toward Spokane. On our way, we stopped at McEuen Park in C’oeur D’Alene, Idaho. That’s a beautiful park and beautiful lake as well.

Our second stay was at the Hampton Inn Spokane downtown. It had a cash rate of $193.37 USD, but after our discounts using credits from Surpass and Hilton Business card, we paid $83.37 USD.

It included breakfast, which was nice. The downtown was a little sketchy so we didn’t venture out, just stayed for the night and got ready to continue on our road trip.

On our way back to Washington area, we stopped at a Winco. I have never been to a Winco before and just loved the prices and the layout of the store. I think a dozen eggs was under $2 USD. Bacon was under $2 USD a package too.

Deception Pass State Park

Our final major stop was Deception Pass, Washington. We spent under $200 USD for 2 nights for two campsites (it’s our tradition to ‘treat’ our family to a 2 night camp stay, lol). We meet our extended family at a campsite.

This was a great way to finish the trip.

After spending so much time around Yellowstone’s mountains, geysers and wildlife, being beside the water at Deception Pass gave us a completely different landscape. It’s nice to be back on the PNW.

Our Total Spending

Here’s the spending on accomodation we tracked:

Expense	Cost
National Park Pass	$80 USD
Hampton Inn Spokane	$137.78 USD
Fairfield Inn Missoula	$0
West Yellowstone KOA	$78.84 USD
Canyon Campground	$103 USD
Colter Bay	$68.32 USD
Fairmont Hot Springs	$0
Hampton Inn Spokane Downtown	$83.37 USD
Deception Pass	$186 USD

The total spending on accomodation for a 10 night road trip from Vancouver to Yellowstone was approximately:

$737 USD ($1016 CAD)

That’s a pretty good result for a family road trip.

Camping vs. Hotels

One of the biggest reasons we were able to keep the cost down was mixing accommodations.

We didn’t try to stay in hotels every night.

Instead, we used:

Hotels + camping + points

That combination works particularly well for a national park trip.

Camping reduced our accommodation costs.

Hotel stays gave us super hot showers, comfortable beds and a break from camping.

Points and discounts reduced the cash cost of our hotels.

I don’t want to spend $300–$500 per night on hotels throughout a national park vacation when you could easily camp for a fraction of that.

Was Yellowstone Worth It With Kids?

Definitely.

In fact, I’d argue that Yellowstone is better with kids than many traditional sightseeing destinations.

There’s very little need to convince children that a geyser is interesting.

When Old Faithful shoots of hot water into the air, that’s entertaining. They even waited patiently for Old Faithful to shoot hot water.

Seeing bison walking along the road in front of us and behind us and beside us is memorable- there will definitely be bison dividend memories many years to come.

I actually liked it better than our Banff road trip, though we hit a snag with the weather when we went last year.