Staying in Story Wy --trip advice

[Amy719]

We will be staying in Story WY this October for 3 days. (Sat sun Monday) we plan on flying into billings Montana earlier in the week like Tuesday. We've never been out west so if we're that close to Yellowstone we want to go. Any suggestions on travel ? Would like to also see Mount Rushmore and the devils tower. We do not intend to spend much time seeing Mount Rushmore or The devils tower....maybe an hour at most at each. Haven't done much research on airports but willing to fly into a different one to accommodate what we want to see. ( even in its in SD or CO.) Interested in the most scenic drives as well. Any advice or suggestions appreciated! Also which route thru the big horn mountains is more scenic ??? 14 or 16?

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

I can't really figure out your plans or what questions you want answered. I really don't get what you are saying about airports, especially mentioning airports in Colorado.

I can say, if you're looking to drive, and use Story as a homebase, you are pretty severely underestimating distances. Story to Mount Rushmore would take you about 5 hours one way - so it's not really a daytrip location. Yellowstone is simply impossible to do as a daytrip from there. You're looking at 5 hours to get to the edge of the park, and the park is huge - it would still take you a couple hours to get to some of Yellowstone main attractions like Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs. Yellowstone really requires a minimum of 2-3 days to see the high points, and you'd really need to stay in or near the park. The other problem, is that by October, Yellowstone is basically shutting down for winter. Depending upon when in the month you are traveling, you'll find very few services open, and some of the roads will be closing due to snow.

But maybe if you tell us a bit more clearly what exactly it is you plan to do, and what things you have questions about, we might be able to provide a better answer.

[DonnaR57]

Perhaps I read into this a little differently, but it seems you're looking for a weekend trip out of Story? If that's the case, you could get on I-90 and head east. About 150 miles (2-ish hours) from Story is Devil's Tower. We spent a couple of hours there this past summer on the way through, and we took the 1-1/2 mile hike all the way around it then stopped for about 10 minutes at the prairie dog field on the way out.

Another 130 miles down the road, a little more than 2 hours (because some is on 2-lane roads), is Mount Rushmore. We spent the morning at the site and did the Presidential Trail as part of that. The rest of the area, however, may also be of interest to you: Custer State Park's Iron Mountain and Needles Highway Drives, and the Wildlife Loop; Wind Cave National Park, and Jewel Cave National Park. You could spend Friday driving over from Story to Custer area (seeing Devil's Tower on the way in), Saturday seeing the rest of the Black Hills, and Sunday driving back.

Michael is correct that Yellowstone is pretty well headed into winter mode in October. Here's the list of closing dates. So much is closed by the end of September, with the rest closing between mid-October and the beginning of November. Road closures have been known to happen before their projected dates, too, because of snowfall.



Donna


Donna

[Southwest Dave]

Is it that you are flying west on Tuesday and have until Saturday to travel from the airport to Story, giving you 4-5 days to travel in the area? If that is the case and it's from Billings and the weather was co-operating, you could visit Yellowstone and the Tetons and then to Story through the Bighorn forest/rec area. You could head out to Devils Tower, Mt Rushmore, Custer and the Black hills etc, even Badlands NP, but going both directions might leave you a little stretched for time. I don't know if Rapid city would be an option to fly into, but that would put you close to the Black Hills and then perhaps you could include a brief visit to Yellowstone as well before heading to Story.