Despite Fires, For Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, It's Business As Usual

Above, Grand Teton National Park last summer. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The wildfires in both Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park has visitors concerned, but with the exception of the closure of the South Entrance of Yellowstone, it is business as usual.

According to U.S. News & World Report:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) — Popular areas in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks were welcoming tourists Thursday for the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, but a wildfire forced some people to drive a little farther than they expected to get to the festivities. 

The blaze in Grand Teton National Park shut down a route leading to Yellowstone's South Entrance, so visitors coming from the south through Wyoming will have to take an hourlong detour into Idaho. 

Four other entrances to Yellowstone are open, and once inside the world's first national park, visitors won't notice much is unusual other than a smoky haze in some parts of the sprawling park.

Many people, including me, have memories of the huge Yellowstone fires of 1988. We visited Yellowstone two years after that fire and quite a bit of the park had a burned-out look. We visited Yellowstone again (last summer) and much of the 1988 burned out areas have re-grown.

When we left Yellowstone last summer, we took the route south through Grand Teton National Park via Yellowstone's south entrance. As the article indicated, that entrance is now closed.

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