Enjoy Montana Hospitality at Yellowstone Tipis

By Sherman Cahill | April 21, 2026

There’s camping, and then there’s camping, and a stay at Yellowstone Tipis in Gardiner, Montana, is firmly the latter. Naturally we love camping at Distinctly Montana, every uncomfortable moment of it: the looming threat of incursion by wildlife springs to mind, as does the way that the hard ground really flattens out your spine. It’s fun, yes, but it can also be good for you the way that a big spoonful of castor oil is good for you.

Yellowstone Tipis is the work of Sarah and Patrik Ondrus, longtime Gardiner residents who broke ground on the property in 2019. COVID delayed their opening until 2021, and the following summer brought the devastating Yellowstone floods that closed the park’s northern entrances and upended the region’s tourism economy. But the Ondrus family persevered, and in 2023 Yellowstone Tipis won both Best Glamping and Best Rustic Hotel at Distinctly Montana’s Best of Montana awards. The operation has been recognized as either a winner or Elite Top Three finalist in the Best Glamping category for three consecutive years.

And no wonder Yellowstone Tipis excises the pain and suffering from camping. Every family or guest stays in their own beautifully crafted tipi with a western animal painted on it—we had the moose—containing a sumptuously comfortable bed in a pleasantly and tastefully decorated space. Each tipi comes with its own assigned private bathroom in the on-site bathhouse, so you’re not sharing facilities with other guests. The tipis themselves are made from organic cotton and hand-painted by Nomadics Tipi Makers, the same company that created the highly authentic tipis featured in Dances With Wolves and The Last Samurai. Spacious and pleasantly appointed with rugs, chests, and homey pillows, the tipis are perfect for returning to after a long day of adventuring.

But at night they become particularly magical. Lights along the walkways flicker to life as the sun sets, casting crystalline shadows across the paths. Outside the main building, a nightly fire provides the perfect spot to sit and read a book while you and the little ones roast marshmallows.

But with all due respect to the lovely tipis, the delicious breakfast, and the family games on the grounds, the real star of our stay was the elk. We stayed for a night in June of last year, just as summer was waking up the hills and the river was swelling with snowmelt. As the sun set and the air began to cool, we heard the bugle of an elk. Or rather, our son heard it and asked what it was. We told him it was the call of a male elk. It didn’t take long before we found them—there must have been at least thirty—placidly grazing not far off from the grounds of Yellowstone Tipis. There, a bull jealously watched over his harem, and a couple of calves frolicked in his orbit. We leaned on the fence as our own children frolicked, too.

The next day, we took the half-day whitewater trip with Yellowstone Raft Company, another Ondrus family operation, and it turned out to be one more of the highlights of our visit. The water was running high—plenty of rapids and more than a few good splashes—with Electric Peak looming over the valley as we made our way downriver. Our guide was knowledgeable and charming, the kind of person who was clearly doing this because she loved it: loved the river, loved these mountains, loved taking families down some of the best whitewater in Montana. The kids had a blast, we all got very wet, and even as longtime Montanans, we learned things about the landscape we’d never known or taken the time to notice before.

We Montanans love to travel around our state. Maybe we take a trip to Hawaii, or Florida, or Bucharest now and then, but we mostly like to travel around our own little demesne. And, luckily for us, Montana offers such a range of climes, landscapes, and experiences that a trip a few hours from home can feel like a grand journey.

That was certainly true for our family. We forged memories we will never forget while at Yellowstone Tipis. And we did it all without compressed spines, sore hips, or long walks to a frigid latrine—the usual repercussions of camping. Instead, we woke up as fresh and as pert as a blooming patch of arrowleaf balsamroots, and were heartily sad to leave such an exceedingly comfortable tipi.