Thrillist's "Ultimate Yellowstone National Park Travel Guide"

Above, Clepsydra Geyser. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

If there's anyone out there who has never visited Yellowstone National Park, they should put it on their bucket list and go.

Yellowstone is the definitive national park and it is so large and diverse, one only scratches the surface of what it has to offer even if they stay there a week. I've been there twice and still haven't seen everything.

Above, two Yellowstone mountain goats. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Thrillist has posted their "ultimate" Yellowstone National Park travel guide and it is well worth a read and bookmarked.

It begins with:

There is no surviving piece of the American West more iconic than Yellowstone. Early Native Americans lived in the region for more than 10,000 years before white explorers designated it the world’s first national park in 1872. Our National Park Service was created here in the Mammoth area in 1916, when the U.S. Army was protecting the park from poachers and developers who looked at Yellowstone’s vast resources the way Sylvester looks at Tweety. Two years later the Army moved out, and the NPS has been a custodian of this land ever since (that’s why the park rangers wear Army hats). 

Even by national park standards (which is to say pretty high), the ecological diversity contained within Yellowstone National Park is absolutely astounding. On your visit expect to see bison, elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and birds -- many, many birds. The especially lucky will spot wolves, moose, bighorn sheep, black bears, or grizzly bears. 

But the animals are the least of it. Geologically, the Yellowstone region -- carved by glaciers and sitting atop one of the world’s largest active volcanoes -- is in a class of its own. It contains the largest concentration of thermal features anywhere in the world, like bubbling hot mud pots and steaming, hissing thermal pools that seem too colorful and alien to exist naturally. It also contains more than half of the world’s geysers, period.

Above, a mom and one of her cubs. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

To read more, go here.