FAQ's

It depends on the interests of your group and the amount of time you have in the area. Are you more interested in viewing the geothermal features of Yellowstone or the wildlife of the national parks? Both? How much time do you want to spend outside of the vehicle, exploring a smaller but more in depth portion of the park? What else are you hoping to do while on vacation? Are you a morning person or would you prefer to sleep in? Are you hoping to enhance your skills as a photographer? The answers to these questions will help us match you with the best tour for your group, so please give us a call! Below are brief descriptions of our programs, but keep in mind our tours can be fully customizable based on your interests and needs.

• Grand Teton Sunrise: A great 4-hour option for visitors that enjoy early mornings and want to pack it all in, getting a quick introduction to the area and the opportunity to view many big game species.
• Grand Teton Sunset: Similar to our sunrise tour, the sunset tour is ideal for visitors who might enjoy sleeping in or who have other daytime activities planned.
• Grand Teton Full Day: This 8-hour tour is focused on seeing as much wildlife as possible. We’ll tour the entirety of Grand Teton National Park, spend quite a bit of time outside of the vehicle on short, easy hikes, and view big game species.
• Yellowstone Tour: Our 12-hour Yellowstone tour is a great way to maximize your time in the park while we do the driving, offering a great combination of viewing wildlife as well as the best of the park’s 10,000 geothermal features. See as much of Yellowstone as is possible in a day! This tour has a geology focus with wildlife being a secondary focus.
• Yellowstone/Teton Summer Multi-Day Tour: Make the most of your time in the area with a tour that focuses on fully exploring the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. This program offers the best opportunity for viewing bears and wolves.
• Yellowstone/Teton Winter Multi-Day Tour: Experience the splendor and uniqueness of a Yellowstone winter with fewer crowds. This tour will focus on geology and solitude, including a snowshoeing outing, lodging within Yellowstone, and a visit to Old Faithful.

Both times are the best wildlife-viewing times of the day, and we don’t see any difference between wildlife sightings in the mornings versus the evenings. That being said, wildlife is wild and can be unpredictable! Choose the tour that best fits with your schedule.

We encourage you to start with one of our Teton tours, followed by a Yellowstone tour. We travel through Grand Teton on our way to Yellowstone, and it’s nice to have the option to drive quickly through GTNP after you are already familiar with the park, rather than before–this gives us more time in Yellowstone!

Your guide will pick you up in one of our safari style vehicles where every guest is guaranteed a window seat. We provide a light breakfast to start the day and then many snacks, as well as hot and cold beverages, are available throughout the tour. Lunch is included on full day tours. We provide high quality binoculars and spotting scopes, in addition to in-depth learning materials including a naturalist kit with pelts and antlers and an iPad with maps, photos and sounds. Your highly qualified and personable guide will be at your disposal throughout the tour, leading you to off the beaten path wildlife hot spots and offering endless knowledge about the region, wildlife, history, and geology. Finally, 2.5% of your payment goes right back into the community, supporting local non-profits that protect community character and wild nature of our backyard.

Your guide will pick you up in one of our safari-style vehicles where every guest is guaranteed a window seat. We provide a light breakfast and a variety of snacks, as well as hot and cold beverages. Lunch is included on full day tours. We provide high quality binoculars and spotting scopes, along with in-depth learning materials including a naturalist kit (with pelts and antlers!) and an iPad with maps, photos, and animal sounds. Your highly qualified, personable guide will be at your disposal throughout the tour, leading you to off-the-beaten-path wildlife hotspots and offering endless knowledge about the region, wildlife, history, and geology.

National Park entry passes and guide gratuity are not included. You can learn more about National Park Passes here. While gratuity is never expected, it is always appreciated if you feel it is deserved. Gratuities typically range from 10-20% of the tour cost.

Yellowstone tours take approximately 12 hours, covering 260 miles round trip. Full-day Grand Teton tours take about 8 hours, covering about 90 miles round trip. Our half-day tours span roughly 4 hours, driving 45 miles round trip.

We plan all of our tours around frequent stops for wildlife viewing, taking in stunning scenery, short naturalist walks, geothermal exploration, bathroom stops, and meals.

Our tours are not physically demanding. While we focus on spending as much time outside as possible, we may be watching wildlife from just outside the vehicle or after a short naturalist walk. Our hikes typically follow flat and easy terrain for less than half a mile at a time. Your guide will adjust the tour to meet your needs and abilities.

The best times of day to view wildlife are at sunrise and sunset, when temperatures are cooler and wildlife is more active. Another perk is that the parks are far less busy in the early morning and late evening, giving us a chance to experience wildlife and scenery with fewer (if any!) crowds. Departure times are entirely customizable on private tours.

As summer progresses into fall and eventually winter, the sun rises later and later and sets earlier and earlier. As winter progresses into spring and eventually summer, the opposite happens. We adjust our tour times to align with sunrise and sunset to maximize wildlife-viewing opportunities.

Everyone! We have toured with locals, seasonal homeowners and their friends, first-time visitors and those who have been to the area many times, science teachers, corporate groups, families, couples, friends, college buddies…the list goes on. We also see many of our guests return year after year.

To guarantee a window seat for every guest, we generally allow no more than 7 guests per trip. Our small group size gives us the opportunity to provide a more personalized experience in the parks. For private tours, we can accommodate up to 10 guests per vehicle. Please call us for larger groups, as we are happy to accommodate your party!

We are happy to accommodate large groups. While we can only accommodate 10 guests per vehicle, we can set up tours with multiple vehicles. If you are traveling with a group of 11+ and prefer to be together in one vehicle, we can arrange a coach style bus, driver, and guide.

We are family-friendly and love opening kids’ eyes to the wonders of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. When families with children join us, we cater our stops and information to be tangible for all ages to make sure we keep the kids engaged during the entire tour. Considering the length of our tours, they may not be ideal for infants or young toddlers, but from our experience, all kids are different and you know your kids best. If you think there is a chance that your child might be disruptive, we ask you to consider booking a private tour. Likewise, if you would prefer to be on a tour without children, please let us know. We prefer that you bring your own car seat or booster, but we also have some available for no charge.

We will travel in 2014 or newer completely custom vans or Ford Expeditions. Our vans are customized with ten reclining captain seats, sliding windows, and roof hatches above each row of seats. Our Expeditions are equipped with sliding windows and roof hatches in the back rows of seats. Roof hatches make for a safe and excellent viewing experience if we are in the middle of a herd of bison or adjacent to a road. We use 4x4 vehicles for navigating creeks and muddy areas during the summer months and add studded tires to assure safe driving conditions in the winter.

Absolutely not! We limit the size of our groups to 7 so that everyone is guaranteed a window seat. If you have booked a private tour with more than 7 people, some will have to sit in the middle, so you may decide to trade off as the day goes by.

We provide a range of locally produced, all natural and/or organic snacks on all of our tours, including dried fruit, healthy trail mix, bison or beef jerky, freshly baked blueberry muffins, and energy bars. For our drink selection we provide reusable water bottles (at no extra charge), orange juice on all morning departures, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and flavored sparkling water. Specifically for our early morning departures, we’ll greet you with organic French press coffee–made on-site–and orange juice. On all full day tours, we provide lunch at either a historic park lodge or picnic style in a beautiful location. All food is included.

No problem! Just let us know. We are happy to provide specific items if a guest has an allergy or a dietary preference.

Of course! We encourage all of our guests to take photos. Our sliding windows and custom roof hatches offer a 15-ft. vantage point for great photo opportunities. While some of our guests tour with their smartphone cameras, others bring high-end photography equipment. We try to balance everyone’s interests on our tours so if you would prefer a photography-focused trip, we would recommend a private tour.

We sure do! Just book a private tour, tell us your interests and preferences, and we will take you to the best wildlife-viewing and scenic locations for your perfect shot.

Thank you so much! We are so glad you enjoyed your time with us. Leaving a review on TripAdvisor goes a long way–be sure to mention your guide!–as that is how many guests hear about us. We’d love it if you followed us on social media, too! We are on Facebook as Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures and Instagram as @jacksonholeecotours. Finally, be sure to check out our online store! Every purchase made directly funds health insurance for our guides!