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.
You'll find a large selection of park maps at this site.
FRIENDS ORGANIZATION
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.
Comments
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