{"id":125,"date":"2009-02-06T01:36:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T01:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/?p=125"},"modified":"2009-02-06T01:36:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T01:36:00","slug":"yikes-book-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"Yikes! Book Early!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_rfIXlgkzrtE\/Sanmramka_I\/AAAAAAAAAA4\/i6_2qCdydsc\/s1600-h\/xanterra.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_rfIXlgkzrtE\/Sanmramka_I\/AAAAAAAAAA4\/i6_2qCdydsc\/s320\/xanterra.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a>The concessions (stores and lodging) in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nps.gov\/yell\">Yellowstone NP<\/a> are now run by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xanterra.com\/\">Xanterra<\/a>.  In my previous visits, it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geocities.com\/geysrbob\/Stores-Hamilton.html\">Hamilton Stores<\/a> (who had operated in Yellowstone for 87 years!).<\/p>\n<p>I started looking into reservations through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xanterra.com\/\">Xanterra&#8217;s very thorough website<\/a>.  Wow!  There&#8217;s not as much lodging options available as I thought&#8230; they&#8217;re already getting booked up.  Here it is early February, and I can&#8217;t find reservations for June.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m told that if you phone them up, they can sometimes work with you to find more options.<\/p>\n<p>Well, looking at the end of July let us find some lodging.  We spread our stay around the park (partly because there was nothing available for two or three days at a time!).  The downside of this is we had to pay a one-night deposit for EACH of the three locations.  So our four-night stay in the park will be at three different sites, so we had to pay up-front for three nights of our stay.  And our stay is so far in the future that my receipt says I&#8217;ve paid an &#8220;estimated&#8221; deposit, and the actual cost may be higher or lower than what I have paid.<\/p>\n<p>On the up side, our lodging places us in several of the popular areas of the park, so we will can sight-see without losing a lot of time driving around (driving in the park can be very slow due to wildlife, road construction, and the low speed limit).<\/p>\n<p>The park lodging is tiered &#8212; some of the cabins do not have a private bath, and some only have a sink in the room.  The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xanterra.com\/\">Xanterra site<\/a> is very good about describing each room (many have wood burning stoves).<\/p>\n<p>Hey, we&#8217;ve got reservations now.  We&#8217;re on our way!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The concessions (stores and lodging) in Yellowstone NP are now run by Xanterra. In my previous visits, it was Hamilton Stores (who had operated in Yellowstone for 87 years!). I started looking into reservations through Xanterra&#8217;s very thorough website. Wow! There&#8217;s not as much lodging options available as I thought&#8230; they&#8217;re already getting booked up. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/specksweb.com\/sandpapershoes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}