Car Rentals in Cody, WY: Why You Need a Vehicle and Getting Around the Bighorn Basin
Published
- Airport
- Yellowstone Regional
- Nearest city
- Billings, 106 mi
- Transit
- Effectively none
- Fuel
- Fill in town
Cody sits in open country a long way from anywhere else, and the practical consequence is simple: without a vehicle, most of this guide is unreachable.
Why a car matters here
The town center is walkable and pleasant. Everything else is not. The dam is six miles west, the Yellowstone gate fifty-two, the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway an hour north, and the campgrounds are spread along roads that no bus serves. There is no useful public transport filling those gaps.
Renting locally
Yellowstone Regional Airport serves Cody, which is why rental desks operate in the town at all. The larger alternative is Billings, Montana, roughly a hundred miles north, which generally carries more choice at the cost of a two-hour drive on either end of the trip.
Driving in the basin
Two things surprise visitors. The first is distance: a hundred miles between towns is normal here and fuel stops are not frequent, so filling up in town before heading up a valley is simply what people do here.
The second is that the scenic roads are slow. The route west follows a river valley and the route north climbs switchbacks; neither can be driven at the speed the mileage suggests.
Vehicle type
An ordinary car handles every paved route described in this guide, both byways included, in season. Forest roads and some campground approaches are a separate question, worth confirming against where you are actually going.
The distances are the whole argument
It is worth seeing the numbers together, because individually each one sounds trivial. The dam is six miles out, the park gate fifty-two, the top of the Chief Joseph byway around thirty to the north, Powell twenty-four to the east and Meeteetse thirty-two to the south. Nothing on that list is far. All of it is further than walking, and none of it is served by anything you can board.
That is the practical shape of a stay here: a base in one place and a vehicle that goes out and comes back, twice a day if the plan is ambitious. Anyone counting on getting between two of those points without their own transport is planning around something that does not exist.
Winter is a different set of roads
The through-routes are kept open and driven all year. The scenic ones are not: the high sections north of town close with the snow and the east entrance road into Yellowstone shuts to ordinary vehicles for the winter entirely. What that leaves in the cold months is the basin: flat, open, usually clear, and prone to wind and drifting, with no gradients to speak of.
Parking
Parking in Cody is free, plentiful and rarely a consideration: on the street along Sheridan Avenue, in lots behind it, and at every attraction in this guide. The exception is the week of the Stampede, when the center fills and the sensible approach is to park once and walk.
At trailheads and forest campgrounds the surfaces are gravel and the turning space is limited, which matters for anything long. A vehicle that handles town easily is not automatically a vehicle that turns around at the end of a forest spur.
Wildlife is the reason to keep the speed sensible on the valley roads after dusk. Deer and elk move down toward the river in the evening and the verges are exactly where they cross; the North Fork road in particular has long unlit stretches where the first warning is eyeshine. Nothing about this is unusual for the mountain west, but it does mean the drive back from a late dinner up the valley takes longer than the drive out.
Common questions
Do you need a car in Cody, Wyoming?
Effectively yes. The town center is walkable, but the dam, both mountain drives, the campgrounds and Yellowstone itself all require a vehicle, and there is no meaningful public transport covering them.
Is there an airport at Cody?
Yellowstone Regional Airport serves the town, which is why rental desks exist here at all. Billings, Montana is the larger alternative about a hundred miles north.
What kind of vehicle do you need?
An ordinary car covers the paved routes, including both scenic byways in season. Forest roads and some campground access are a different question, and worth checking against where you actually intend to go.
Can you drive the scenic routes near Cody in winter?
Not all of them. The through-routes are cleared and driven all year, but the high sections north of town close with the snow, and the East Entrance road into Yellowstone shuts to ordinary vehicles for the winter entirely. What that leaves is the basin: flat, open, usually clear, and prone to wind and drifting.