Some of the most incredible sunsets in Yellowstone National Park can be found in the park's backcountry. This one appeared over the Flat Mountain Arm of Yellowstone Lake. Kurt Repanshek photo.
What can you do during a visit to Yellowstone National Park? Answering that can run the gamut from watching Old Faithful to learning about Thomas Moran, but to give you a head-start here are 10 items that should be on your "to-do" list when you visit the park.
1. Watch Old Faithful perform. Early mornings offer you perhaps the best opportunity to avoid the crowds that can congregate around the geyser throughout the day.
2. In late spring and early summer (through mid-June), head early in the day (right around sunrise isn't too early) to the Lamar Valley to look for wolves, grizzlies, elk, and bison. You just might luck out and catch the howl of a wolf hanging in the air.
3. Backpack down to Shoshone Lake, where the Shoshone Geyser Basin sputters, fumes, and boils 'round-the-clock.
4. If you're experienced, paddle into the park's backcountry via either Lewis, Shoshone, or Yellowstone lakes. Yellowstone Lake offers a portal into one of the wildest places in the Lower 48, a place where you can listen to wolves, photograph bald eagles and herons, watch grizzlies, and fish for trout. You'll also enjoy some of the most incredible sunsets in the park.
5. Check out the Museum of the National Park Ranger near the Norris Geyser Basin. Located in the original Norris Soldier Station near the entrance to Norris Campground, this museum offers exhibits that depict the development of the park ranger profession from its roots in the military traditions through early rangers and to the present array of NPS staff specialized duties. A small auditorium shows a laser-disc production of the 25-minute movie, "An American Legacy," which tells the story of the development of the National Park Service.
6. If you're a history buff, plan a visit to the Yellowstone National Park Heritage and Research Center in Gardiner, Montana, just north of Mammoth Hot Springs. Inside the center's walls you'll find almost 3,000 linear feet of historic records, 90,000 photographic prints and negatives, 20,000 books and manuscripts, 300,000 cultural and natural science specimens, over 35,000 archeological artifacts and approximately 10,000 plant specimens. Call (307) 344-2664 to reserve a spot on the public tours.
7. Walk to Artist Point near Canyon. This spot offers perhaps the best view of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River.
8. Explore the Norris Geyser Basin, which is the hottest, and maybe the most colorful, thermal basin in Yellowstone.
9. Make a dinner reservation at Roosevelt Lodge. Before dinner or after, snag a seat in one of the rocking chairs on the lodge's front porch for a relaxing view of the Lamar Valley.
10. Learn about the supervolcano slumbering beneath Yellowstone at the Canyon Visitor Education Center.
There you have it. It's not an all-inclusive list, but it's a good start if you're wondering how to spend your time in the park.
RESOURCES
Visit the Yellowstone National Park website for detailed, indexed information.
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The Yellowstone Association provides interpretative programs and field programs to get park visitors into the out-of-doors. Since it opened for business in 1933, this non-profit has provided more than $24 million in exhibits, programs, and publications for the park and its visitors.
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Comments
A few things as background to your travel - if you've been there the past couple of days, you also experienced significant delays in the western part of the park, 1-2 hours, because bison are being hazed by the National Park Service between Madison Junction and Fountain Flats. They are doing this because there are other bison being hazed within the park by the Montana Department of Livestock (that's right, I said within the park - and by low flying helicopters), by an operation meant to rid Montana of wild bison even from areas where there are no cows and where most of the property owners support wild bison (though most of the area is public National Forest Service land). The NPS is claiming that the operations are necessary to keep too many buffalo from being in one place and because if they don't, they will surely be killed in Montana. What they aren't saying is that they operate a trap, slaughter bison themselves, and are partners in the plan that make this possible. They also haven't written a press release alerting travelers to the delays in recent days. There are several blogs that mention it, however, and I was alerted by an email from a person touring Yellowstone.
Secondly, in late August, the critical road between Madison and Norris will close for the season. This will have a lot of effect on your travel, as you probably must split your trip into two parts unless you plan to do a day's driving to get around it. Going from Mammoth to Old Faithful (or West Yellowstone) will be supremely difficult, where right now it's relatively easy. The NPS has been holding public hearings and letting people know; it's something you should know if you are planning a late summer or early fall trip.
Thirdly, coming from the South (the Tetons), there is a big road construction project at and near the north boundary of the Tetons. This will cost you about half an hour in delays and a few miles of bumpy travel. There's usually road construction - in recent years - in that direction.
But, the park is huge, and there's that list of 10 and a million more things to enjoy (my personal addition might be - sit on a sand bar along Yellowstone Lake as the sun sets and the stars rise, or given my mood, go to Superintendent Lewis's office in Mammoth and complain about bison management).
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
I just returned from a trip to Yellowstone and I have not experienced this 1-2 hour delay you speak of.
However, I can vouch for your third point. The road construction south of the park towards the Tetons does grant about a half-hour delay.
Ask Suzanne to provide an extra seat in her office because I want to complain about it also.
Rick Smith
More people need to be made aware of the treatment of the buffalo at this time of year. Reading the updates from the "buffalo field campaign" is quite disturbing. They are hazing the buffalo to move them back into Yellowstone during the birthing season. Newborn and pregnant bison are forced to run for miles without resting or water. Not only are the bison harassed but all wildlife in the area is disturbed by this action. This is animal abuse that is allowed to continue year after year.
"5. Check out the Museum of the National Park Ranger near the Norris Geyser Basin. Located in the original Norris Soldier Station near the entrance to Norris Campground, this museum offers exhibits that depict the development of the park ranger profession from its roots in the military traditions through early rangers and to the present array of NPS staff specialized duties. A small auditorium shows a laser-disc production of the 25-minute movie, "An American Legacy," which tells the story of the development of the National Park Service."
This is a great stop. There is also a short video called "Conviction of the Heart" that is worth seeing. I had the privilege of being a volunteer interpreter at the museum last summer. It was fun as the crowds there aren't so large as they are in other visitor centers. You can actually talk to people about park issues and help them understand the importance of Yellowstone and the rest of the National Park System.
Norris is a great place to camp. It's really a perfect place. No cell phone service (at least last summer), no internet, no stores, no gas stations, nothing. The campground campfire circle has no electricity so the rangers giving the evening programs have to depend on their words to paint the pictures that you see in power point shows in other evening programs elsewhere in the park. The Norris Geyser Basin is reputedly the most active in the park and the boardwalks wind around brightly colored pools, mysterious fumaroles, and small geysers. The seasonal interpreters stationed at the Geyser Basin were uniformly polite and well-informed about the basin and the rest of the park.
In my career, I probably attended close to 200 evening programs. Last summer, though, at Norris, I saw an evening program that broke the mold. The topic was something like "the history of Yellowstone." The seasonal interpreter was a concert violinist. At one point in his talk, he said something like "when the army first protected Yellowstone before there was an NPS, they always had a fiddler." He then took out his violin and played a fiddle tune. Later on he related that in the 20's and 30's, concession employees often provided evening entertainment for the guests at the hotels and lodges. He said, "You probably would have heard something like this" and played a sentimental ballad on the violin. He did this maybe four times during the talk. The visitors in attendance loved it.
It was also gratifying to see the kids who were enrolled in the junior ranger program line up after the evening campfire programs to get the ranger's signature. One of the requirements is that a junior ranger has to attend at least one evening program and secure the ranger's signature to verify it. I would always ask a couple of them to come down to the museum when it opened to help me put up the flag. One evening when I was ready to close the museum, there was only a French familly still there. The father was the only one who spoke English. The kids were maybe 10 and 12. I asked the father if they would like to help me take down the flag and properly fold it. He asked them in French, of course, and they responded yes. After taking it down--telling them through their father that we could not let it touch the ground, I then taught them how to properly fold the flaq. Their father told me that he did not think his kids would ever forget the experience.
Rick Smith
We just returned from a three day stay at Madison Campground over the Memorial Day weekend. There are two things that really struck me.
First, is the massive amount of traffic leaving the park via the west entrance every evening. At one point, we counted over 100 autos in a row. And, none of this was caused by any buffalo on the road - just a huge amount of traffic. Made us feel like we had gone to the big city for the weekend.
Second, is the massive amount of damage caused by the bison. This is most obvious damage is around the sensitive thermal features. As you walk along the boardwalks and designated trails, you can't help but notice how the bison have trampled the ground everywhere around you. In the Old Faithful area, there are many of the large evergreen trees that have been killed. I noticed no sign of bug infestation, which was my first thought. Then, I began to notice that all the bark had been rubbed off of the trees, causing their death. Many of these trees are probably over 100 years old, and have survived the fires and other natural disasters, only to be killed by the bison. Finally, I notice the destruction by bison of the native vegetation in the riparian areas around the park. It used to be that sightings of moose were not uncommon. Now, with their primary food source gone, such sightings are rare.
One has to wonder why we never hear from the park service on the issue of bison population within the park. It seems that they prefer to divert attention from that issue. Does the park service consider the population of bison appropriate? Does the park service consider the park to be overly populated with bison? Is it appropriate for the park service, within their misson, to ignore the issue? Does the park service recognize that there is a population problem, but quietly hoping that someone or something else will take care of it for them? (ie wolves, disease, State of Montana?) Why does the park service always dance around the issue? If anyone can answer this issue, I would appreciate hearing it.
While I have never personally read anything about studies related to bison damage of thermal features, there is a long history and controversy over bison numbers in Yellowstone. Most of those arguments - and the arguments about elk are more famous - have to do with the amount of carrying capacity in Yellowstone's Northern Range. Since the late 1960s, the NPS has maintained that the carrying capacity of the range is much higher than people have previously imagined, and regardless would follow a policy of natural regulation, essentially arguing that the ecosystem is a better regulator of populations than human management.
Others have disagreed vehemently, though again the focus has been mostly on elk numbers. Bison numbers have never been allowed to reach a high enough of a number for the data to be conclusive. Nevertheless, the scientists who have disagreed with NPS scientists have argued that Yellowstone is not an intact ecosystem (that natural regulation therefore is a myth and should not serve as the basis of policy), that carrying capacity is much lower and that there has been damage to smaller mammals and to vegetation (especially riparian vegetation) as a result.
For me, the argument of carrying capacity ultimately has no bearing on the slaughter and hazing of buffalo because either way, it convicts the NPS/Montana policy on bison. Either carrying capacity has been reached, and then you have no good reason to bottle bison inside the park - i.e., they should be treated as wildlife and managed as wildlife; all other species to some degree or other are allowed outside of Yellowstone (even wolves have it much, much better than bison). Indeed, in this case keeping bison in the park is a detriment to the park. Or, carrying capacity hasn't been reached in which case there should be no artificial population numbers that are set (as currently are set by the Interagency Bison Management Plan, though those numbers are hypothesized based on migration patterns, not on range carrying capacity). While the park's ability to hold more bison would seem to justify hazing bison back into the park, actually it more strongly suggests a policy of leaving things alone - since there's not too many bison and no reason to be moving them around within park boundaries.
As for damage to thermal features by bison - your original observation - I've never read of any features destroyed by bison (not saying it hasn't happened, but I've never read it). I have read plenty of cases of humans destroying thermal features. Perhaps, there are too many people, and their numbers should be culled. That is not exactly a modest proposal (and not a unique one, either, to Yellowstone); it's just not clear to me how it could mean anything (if your observation is correct) except allowing the free migration of buffalo into Montana outside the park so that these potential stressors are relieved. Do we value the small number of paranoid cattle operators (or even fewer - none - in some areas), or do we want to protect Yellowstone and what we take it to be (a place of unique features that values wildlife)? Perhaps, we have not stressed enough how Yellowstone itself is hurt by the IBMP over and above what happens by imposing absurd boundaries on one particular kind of wildlife.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
One of the complaints about bison outside the park is that they carry a disease that gets into the cattle populaton. So there is a concerted effort to keep bison within the park
We've gone over this a thousand times, but in this particular case, let's look at it again. The hazing of bison in the park, according to the NPS, was to make room for buffalo being hazed from Montana by the Department of Livestock. Those bison were being hazed from a peninsula just outside the park boundaries in Hebgen Lake called Horse Butte. Awhile back, there used to be cattle on this peninsula in the summer months (after brucellosis can be spread) leased to a man named Munns from Idaho. That property has since been sold to a family named Galanis who don't own cattle, don't want cattle, and want wild buffalo on their property. The peninsula itself is mostly in the Gallatin National Forest, though there are about 100 - 200 people who live on the peninsula on private property. Many of those private citizens have formed a buffalo advocacy group called Horse Butte Neighbors of Buffalo (HOBNOB) to protest Department of Livestock intrusions onto their land and to promote wild buffalo on the Butte.
None of this has mattered. This year, Department of Livestock helicopters once again flew as low as 20 feet over private land to haze buffalo back into the park, they continued that hazing well into the park - and as I understand it, well inside the Wyoming state line. That action has prompted the hazing from Madison Junction to Fountain Flats of bison more than a dozen miles inside the park boundary.
Of course, even if there were cattle, we would support wild buffalo populations just as we and others have supported wild elk populations (who also have the disease and have been strongly suspected of spreading it - I believe they have, but there are very knowledgeable hunting advocates who even doubt that). The onus of doing business when you are trying to restore wildlife populations should be on the cattle grower who is currently heavily subsidized for leasing on public lands (public lands have preferenced cattle over wildlife, especially wild buffalo). The locals in areas who want wildlife (and some produce cattle) should be allowed to keep the Department of Livestock from enforcing their draconian provisions. The cost of management of buffalo hasn't stopped Montana from losing its class free status on brucellosis anyhow. The cost of having brucellosis hasn't outweighed the cost the state has spent supposedly trying in vain to prevent it. Stockgrowers in Montana have tried to prevent buffalo that don't have brucellosis from being moved to other areas in the state, trying unsuccessfully this time to pass laws in the legislature designed to stop that movement. And, we can go on and on, all of it adding up to the reality that brucellosis is a red herring here, that the issue is about grass, about who controls it, and what sorts of species should have preference over it. Indeed, when talking about buffalo in other parts of the state, stockgrowers give up their hand and mention competition for grasslands. However, if that's the issue, then the Department of Livestock wouldn't have any authority to stop buffalo from moving over public lands and over private lands where the owners wanted buffalo. They've masqueraded this as a livestock disease issue to assert their barony over Montana (despite the reality that at most, livestock makes up 1.5% of Montana's GDP).
So, all of this has led to NPS hazing of bison that are nowhere near the boundaries and to delays. Kurt has posted NPS spokesman Al Nash's defense of the hazing on this site. They probably should have posted a press release alerting travelers last week to the delays. I think those management operations are over, although Buffalo Field Campaign members told me Sunday at a prayer ceremony for the buffalo lead by Lakota Chief Arvol Looking Horse that the buffalo continue to move back and forth across the boundary and that it was hard to predict if there would be another round of hazing.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World