What Not To Do In Yellowstone

Over the years, I have been to Yellowstone National Park several times. The first being in 1990 and the last being in 2019.

Above, Yellowstone bison grazing in a meadow next to a river. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

While Yellowstone is a national park that should be put on everyone's "bucket list" of things to do, there are a few things there that visitors should avoid doing.

Travel + Leisure has posted an article on six mistakes to avoid in Yellowstone.

They begin it with:

My California cousins may have taken their first steps at Disneyland, but growing up in Montana, my family’s go-to “theme park” was Yellowstone National Park—where the theme wasn’t Mickey Mouse but rather Mother Nature.

More than 30 years later, my home base is still just an hour from the Beartooth Pass, which leads to Yellowstone’s northeast entrance. As both a local and regular parkgoer, a part of me dies inside every time I read about a Yellowstone “touron”—a term now in our vernacular thanks to the popular Instagram account—doing something dumb. Touron offenses run the gamut from getting too close to wildlife to damaging fragile geological sites, and these incidents often put visitors in danger. People have been gored, stranded in their vehicles during winter, and even "dissolved" in hot springs.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want people to stop visiting Yellowstone, and I certainly don’t want to be giving hall monitor energy. I just want us to respect the environment and ourselves while enjoying the world’s first national park. For that reason, here are a few common mistakes to avoid during your visit, whether it’s your first or 15th time driving through the Roosevelt Arch. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good start. And remember, in the wise words of Jellystone’s lovable Yogi, be “smarter than the average bear.”

 To read more, go here.