The gateway of the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park is the otherwise quiet town of Gardiner, Montana. At the south end of the Gardiner, a strip of galleries, gift shops, and café faces the National Park’s entrance, and, during the season, the strip is a bustling footway of different cultures, languages, and attitudes. Most are browsing the row on the south end of town for last-minute souvenirs on their way out of Yellowstone, Gardiner experiences a constant transfusion of people.
Gardiner too is teeming with out-of-towners with dreams of rafting the Yellowstone River. Many have never been on a river, and they stumble around each other like lost children listening to the unfamiliar voices of river guides shouting their names over the noise of passing cars, other rafters, and elk snorting their frustrations of the seasonal takeover of their otherwise historic sanctuary.
Please be careful driving around Gardiner for the lives of the wildlife crossing the road. The elk, bison, and mule deer are way too beautiful a creature to be buried under your cars. Please keep that in mind while driving on HWY 89 to and from the Park. Most people view driving as a thing between moments, and it’s not at all, there are so many reasons why that mindset is thoughtless and potentially dangerous, not just for you.
People don’t go to Gardiner, Montana, people go to Yellowstone by way of Gardiner, and I think that’s a bit of a shame. Gardiner is a great town, there’s enough to fill your itinerary without stepping into Yellowstone. For the most part, the locals have managed to regulate designated areas, and only a small handful of cafés and restaurants appeal to tourists and locals alike; Main and Stone Streets have all but been gift-wrapped for excited excursionists. The Corral has the best burger in town, and they’re famous for their bison meat.
The Corral has a walk-up window, and private and covered patio seating along Scott Street. Tumbleweed Bookstore and Café is my favorite place to grab a sandwich and sit on the front deck of Tumbleweed’s or take it into the Park with me for later. The Cowboy’s Grille and Iron Horse Bar & Grille are the best dinner spots, serving bar and southern comfort style foods, and they both have a deck that overlooks the river.
After a day in the park, I love to order a country fried steak and beer from Cowboys, and sit on the deck; it's one of the best ways to transition from a full day dodging people on boardwalks awe-inspired by Yellowstone’s unique beauty, and lying in bed staring thoughtlessly as twilight reflects off my bedroom walls.
Eat Café is the best, and maybe the only reason to stop by Sightseer Row on the south end of town, every time I stop into Eat Café for a coffee, I end up buying some foodstuff also, the food is great and the atmosphere of the café is kind of post-modern meets 1950’s elite. I've ordered something at Eat Café, and sat outside on the patio tables, people-watching, writing, and looking out across the rolling hills that are the gateway to Yellowstone.
I also like to get food and walk down to Arch Park, down the hill from Roosevelt Arch—Yellowstone’s original entrance—and sit under the gazebo and unwind. Herds of elk and bison wandering around the park and under the shade of the Arch. It’s a great photo opportunity, but stay away from the animals, they might seem biddable, but they’re not. bison gore people in Yellowstone almost every day. The Gardiner Library, across the street from Arch Park, is open Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they have a great selection of books for sale in the back of the library. Old Faithful is one of a few interruptions allowed to disturb a good book.
Two great photography studios on Sightseer Row (Yellowstone Gallery and Frameworks and Yellowstone Wild Galleries) are worth a walkthrough. I haven’t always been one to buy another person’s photography until I started shooting and selling my photographs, and now I enjoy browsing and supporting other photographers. These two galleries focus on the wildlife of Yellowstone National Park, and there are some incredible captures of nearly every imaginable creature within the borders of the Park.
I might be one of the few people who will drive to Gardiner, park somewhere in town, and then walk the streets and never actually go into Yellowstone. Much of Gardiner goes unnoticed. First Street is residential and boasts some of the oldest homes in town, built with stone, and in a style that screams historic Montana. Besides, it’s a pleasant walk.
You may happen upon small town parks you would never have noticed; I discovered a relatively new pavilion at the south end of Park Street, a trail beyond the gazebo that winds down the hill, and down to the banks where the Gardiner and Yellowstone Rivers meet. People were swimming in the Yellowstone River next to the bank, away from where the two currents come together, in a pool spiraling, before immersing with the rest of the waters.
Six miles north of Gardiner are the Yellowstone Hot Springs. And since living in New Mexico I like to think of myself as a hot spring enthusiast. There are many natural, unfenced hot springs, veiled by miles of forest and overgrown footpaths in the mountains of northern New Mexico.
The Yellowstone Hot Springs are enclosed, and although they are natural waters piped in from the Park the pools are not fed by a natural onsite and underground spring. The springs are regulated, there are three pools, and each has a different temperature, and they are deliberately maintained. Regardless, only a little is left to be desired at Yellowstone Hot Springs, not just because you are soaking in the mineral-rich hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, but also because the views are breathtaking.
I have watched herds of bison and elk walking the hills to the east, bighorn sheep and bear on the mountain to the west, and golden and bald eagles soaring overhead, and when it snows, while you’re in the springs, it’s difficult to tell where the earth ends and heaven begins (don’t go on Sundays; families with small children like to think that the hot springs are an alternative to a day at the city pool, and that’s called being a bad human, but they do it anyway, and on Sundays).
I know that Gardiner, Montana is going to be little more than a brief intermission in your trip through Yellowstone, still give the town a few extra hours of your time, be it to explore one of the restaurants, one or two of the local boutiques, the residential sidewalks, or even taking a walk across the bridge and stopping directly above the center of the small canyon, watching people climb into rafts at the bottom from Montana Whitewater Rafting.
It might be fun to drive the ridiculously unmanageable dirt road up the mountain to the abandoned gold-mining ghost town of Jardine, Montana, roughly six miles east of Gardiner. In any case, Gardiner is a great little town (as long as you never, ever go to Outlaw’s Pizza. I could reuse that hour of my life). Gardiner should be part of your Yellowstone experience.