A visit to West Yellowstone is destined to be one filled with many photo opportunities and at the holidays, the best photos will often end up gracing the front of your family Christmas card and although you could take a formal and posed one that would do fine, we think you will want more. Families grow and they change and the family that explores West Yellowstone over the Christmas of 2024 won’t resemble the one who may return many years later and we at Sweet Home Montana understand this need to immortalize today’s version. Our guide to where to take family holiday photos in West Yellowstone will ensure that the pictures taken will be pictures never forgotten, even as the look of your family changes and moves forward.
West Yellowstone Heritage Park, 179-199 Firehole Avenue
Looking entirely different than it will in the summer months, West Yellowstone Heritage Park will be a wintry wonderland and as you dress in your most colorful and warmest winter garb, the contrast of color and white snow, green pine trees and white snow, will ensure that every pic you take will stand out in the crowd. An interesting jungle gym, offering a pirate’s ladder just begging for your little monkeys to climb on could be used as a prop for your family photo, so don’t forget to smile, reminding everyone who sees the finished shot just how wonderful of a time you had during your holiday adventures in Montana!
Gibbon Falls
If you have never seen a waterfall freeze in the winter, you are about to experience something that will change the core of who you are. No two ice waterfalls are the same, and while some may resemble the back of a woman’s white wedding gown, trailing down over the rocks, others may provide something a little more witchy, with spikes splintering out in all directions. Gibbons Falls can resemble both, depending on the time of year and how cold it gets, and we can promise that any family photo taken with the falls in the background will be the best ones ever. There is a catch, though, as the falls are located inside the gates of Yellowstone National Park, which with the exception of the North Entrance, are all closed during the winter months. To see this amazing site, you must book a guided tour. We highly recommend Yellowstone Back Country Adventures for this and other winter-time tours.
Horse Butte Lookout
The snowmobiles come into play again for this next family photo opportunity, as the Horse Butte Lookout Snowmobile Trail provides an excellent way to get to one of the most scenic spots in the area. Offering panoramic views of the mountains, the trees, and the stark and nearly desolate beauty of a Montana snow-covered landscape, the photos taken here deserve to be on a Christmas Card and perhaps you can even include the snowmobiles as props, providing even more color to your shot.
West Yellowstone Town Christmas Tree
The West Yellowstone Christmas Tree provides the perfect background for any holiday pic, even in the daylight hours and when your family and friends see how happy you look, how beautiful the tree is with its lights shimmering in the dark sky, and how stunning our landscape can be when blanketed in snow, they will wish they could have joined in all the fun. Traditions become traditions for a reason and the picture of the family in front of our Christmas tree is one that will definitely bring you joy.
At Home with Sweet Home Montana
The best family photos are the candid ones, and throughout your stay, our Sweet Home Montana holiday hideaways will offer plenty of opportunities to snap the perfect picture. Line up along the railing of the front porch of your escape, tall ones in the back with the littlest ones on their shoulders, and the ones who are neither big nor small standing in front. Gather around the Christmas tree you put up and decorated, colorfully wrapped gifts adding excitement to the background. You can’t help but to keep watching all the goings on from behind the lens of your camera or phone, afraid to put either down, as you might miss the picture that will best reflect the wonders of your visit. Maybe this will be the year that you don your matching pajamas and pose with happy smiles in front of a roaring fire, reminding you of the best vacation you have ever experienced every time you see the resulting photo.
Reserve your favorite Sweet Home Montana escape today!