My husband and I bought Matt and Cheryl’s itinerary—the Schoss Guide—for our recent trip to Yellowstone, and it would have been worthwhile at twice the price. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to plan our trip nearly as effectively as we did. The itinerary let us know what we could reasonably see in the four days we had in the park and helped us organize our time efficiently. Because of the Schoss Guide, we got to see Old Faithful go off twice!

We followed their four-day schedule (with maps), which was made up of “Geyser-Gazing Day,” “The Heart of Yellowstone Day,” “Welcome to Wonderland Day,” and “American Serengeti Day.” Each day is divided into a series of sightseeing stops, the choices you’ll have to make about what to see that day, and makes suggestions about how to use your time most efficiently. They tell you how far away each stop is, how much time it’ll probably take, what you need to get to early to find parking, and other such helpful information. But the “Schoss Schlep” (as we came to call it) is not a rigid schedule; it’s flexible enough that you can adapt it to fit your own interests.

One of the things I’m most grateful for is that the itinerary warned us against staying the whole time in West Yellowstone, which is exactly what we’d planned to do. Matt and Cheryl said that would make it difficult to drive through Lamar Valley and back in a day. They were right. Spending a couple of nights in Gardiner made our day trip to Lamar Valley much more doable. And I’m so glad we didn’t miss out on that because we saw grizzlies and cubs, wolves and pups, coyotes, elk, and a black bear that practically came up to the road. It was a glorious day.

The itinerary also tells you what to listen to on Matt’s audio guide as you visit each section of the park. The audio guide is both informative and entertaining. Some of his talks we listened to twice. My husband is a history professor and when we listened to Matt’s first talk, he commented, “Yes, this guy is a good lecturer.” Which from him is the ultimate compliment! The audio guide contains stories about the history of Yellowstone—including the earthquake of 1959—and information about geysers, the re-introduction of wolves into the park, saving the bison, and why it’s a bad idea to feed the bears.

I should point out that neither Matt nor Cheryl asked me to write this testimonial. I offered to write it off my own bat when we returned home because their itinerary was such a great help to us. I’m one of those people who always buys three guidebooks for every trip and I’d easily have traded any two of them for the Schoss itinerary. It helped us get the most out of what will be for us a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Do yourself a favor. Make the most of your time. Get the Schoss Guide. And have a great trip.