Day 6 of our Rockies or Bust 2010 road trip takes us from West Yellowstone, Montana to Sun Valley, Idaho with plenty of stops along the way. Some intended and some, well, we just had to make the best of them.

Leaving Cody behind, we drive along roughly the same route to Yellowstone that Bill Cody used when he took visitors to the park. Obviously, things are a bit different now. The Pahaska Tepee was a two-day journey back in the day and today it’s less than an hour. A visit to the park that took weeks can now be done in a day of driving.

Yellowstone National Park is the oldest national park. For those quick with logic, that means that Yellowstone is our first national park. The park is huge, and a map doesn’t truly convey how much geography is really encompassed. Housed in three states (Wyoming, Idaho and Montana), first-time visitors to Yellowstone often attempt to “see the whole park” in a few days. That’s a sure recipe for disaster.

Winter driving usually means trying to avoid snow, but visitors to Togwotee Mountain Lodge, a mountain resort nestled high above Jackson Hole, WY in the mountains of the Bridger-Teton National Forest near Yellowstone National Park, come for the hundreds of inches of fresh powder each year.

It’s called The Great American Road Trip for a reason. There’s no better way to celebrate Independence Day than to hit the road and experience history. The fireworks are an added bonus.

For this month’s expert itinerary, I reached out to Janet Chapple, author of the book Yellowstone Treasures: The Traveler’s Companion to the National Park. The updated third edition just came out in April, and our family will be spending a couple of weeks there this summer, so I wanted to get some expert advice on how to tackle the park.