6 Mistakes To Avoid In Yellowstone

Above, trying to pet a "fluffy cow" like this one is not a good idea. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

In recent years, a new word has been coined that combines the words tourist and moron. It us touron.

A touron is someone who does something stupid in places like Yellowstone National Park such as trying to pet a "fluffy cow" (i.e., a bison) and getting gored.

With the above in mind, Travel + Leisure has an article on six mistakes to avoid in Yellowstone National Park. 

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.

Thirty 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 trending Instagram account — doing something dumb. Most headlines, like June’s “Bison gores 83-year-old woman in Yellowstone National Park,” involve tourists getting too close to wildlife, but touron offenses run the gamut. In May, someone filed a complaint about a “lack of trained Grizzlies.” Just a month earlier, a car full of visitors got stuck in snow for six hours after ignoring road closed signs. And last August, several tourists stuck their hands in a hot spring. Fortunately, it wasn’t the same one that “dissolved” a man in 2016.

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, below are a few "don’ts" that I hope you find helpful, whether it’s your first or 15th time driving through the Roosevelt Arch. It’s not an exhaustive list (see here for the motherlode of park rules and regulations), 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. 

Man Stands In Road As Bison Stampede Towards Him

Above, a pair of Yellowstone bison relaxing on a hill. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

There's a lot of stupid people in this world.

Here's a touron (tourist moron) who stood in the middle of a Yellowstone National Park road as a herd of bison stampeding towards him. Definitely a leading candidate for a Darwin Award.

From Whiskey Riff:

And the award for “National Park Idiot of the Year” goes to…

There are some people that live on God’s green Earth that live their life like they’re invincible. The man in this video, who stands right in the middle of a road in Yellowstone National Park with a bison herd barreling right at him, is one of those people.

To read more and see the video, go here.

Don’t Make These 5 National Parks Mistakes!

Above, wildlife should only be observed from a safe distance. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

A new term has been coined for stupid people doing stupid things in our national parks. It is touron. It is a combination of the words tourist and moron.

There seems to a lot of tourons out in the national parks these days. 

RV Travel has posted a video and article on five mistakes people make in our national parks.

They begin it with:

The team from CampBrood says there are some surefire ways to spot a National Park beginner and these 5 national park mistakes are a dead giveaway that the person is a new, inexperienced visitor in the national parks.

But fear not. Not only does the video show you five beginner national park mistakes—it also shows how to correct them. The video also says that from time to time, even experienced travelers make some of these national park mistakes.

To read more and see the video, go here.