Everything to know about Yellowstone National Park

Why you should go to Yellowstone

If ever a park had a flair for the dramatic it’s Yellowstone—geysers, grizzlies, and its very own Grand Canyon, as well as trendy towns and backcountry trails that rarely see human bootprints. After all these years, the world’s very first national park is still one of the most imposing—a blend of land and water, forest and field, wildlife and geothermal features that often seem to be living things.

Where to find the best views in the park

The region’s rugged topography renders plenty of spots to snatch a bird’s-eye-view of the park. The fire lookout tower atop 10,243-foot (3,122-meter) Mount Washburn flaunts what many consider the absolute best view, a panorama that includes the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and jagged, snowcapped Granite Peak in the Beartooth Mountains just outside the park. The most popular of several routes to the summit starts from Dunraven Pass on the Grand Loop Road.

Amanda Evans, lead field educator at Yellowstone Forever, recommends the panorama from Sepulcher Peak near Mammoth Hot Springs in the park’s northwest corner. She says the name comes from the fact that if you’re viewing the mountain from a distance, “it looks almost like a body lying in a casket.”

While it’s pretty cool standing right next to Old Faithful when the world’s most famous geyser erupts, Observation Point hovers above the entire geyser field and Old Faithful Village.

The best view (and photo op) of the Grand Prismatic Spring is not from the boardwalk trail beside the colorful geothermal curiosity but from an overlook on the hillside behind the spring and just off the Fairy Falls Trail.

(6 essential stops on a Yellowstone road trip.)

Where to find the park’s best trails

The park’s most popular walks are the shorter trails in the Upper Geyser Basin that range from the five minutes it takes to stroll from the nearest parking lot to Old Faithful, to multi-hour but still relatively easy hikes to Fairy Falls and the Queen’s Laundry.

The north and south rim trails along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone lead to dramatic views of Yellowstone Falls including the classic picture postcard scene from Artist Point.

“I love the Storm Point Trail,” says Evans of a path along the north shore of Yellowstone Lake. “It’s got just the perfect views and it's pretty easily attainable for families.” Another waterfront route that she recommends is the Lake Overlook Trail near West Thumb Geyser Basin. “For early morning go-getters, it provides an incredible sunrise view, but it’s beautiful any time of day.”

With around 900 miles (1,449 km) of trails, the park provides plenty of scope for longer, tougher hikes like the Seven Mile Hole Trail along the Yellowstone River, the 33-mile (53-km) Lamar River Trail through one of the park’s best wildlife zones, and a 20-mile (32-km) portion of the Nez Perce National Historic Trail near Yellowstone Lake.

The best spots for seeing wildlife

“Yellowstone is particularly special for its abundance and diversity of wildlife,” says Evans. “It has this incredibly complex multi-carnivore, multi-herbivore ecosystem that's unparalleled. There’s nowhere better where the average person can follow the saga of a wolf family across generations or watch the interplay between these charismatic megafauna.”

The legendary Lamar Valley in northern Yellowstone is the best place to get a glimpse of the wolves that were reintroduced to the park in 1995, as well as large herbivores like bison and elk that graze the valley’s lush grasslands. Given the abundance of prey, the valley also attracts grizzly bears.

An hour’s drive south along the Grand Loop Road, Hayden Valley nurtures the park’s other bison herd, as well as elk and bears. Grizzlies are also spotted around Fishing Bridge on the north side of Yellowstone Lake, while the marshy shoreline near West Thumb is one of the better places to view moose.

Plenty of other carnivores—mountain lions, lynx and bobcats, coyotes and foxes, badgers and wolverines—roam the park. But spotting these stealthy, elusive creatures is more a matter of luck rather than searching at a specific geographical location.

On the other hand, birds tend to congregate around water and are relatively easy to spot and identify. According to the Park Service, around 150 bird species nest in Yellowstone. They range from iconic raptors like bald and golden eagles, to the white pelicans, trumpeter swans, and common loons that frequent Yellowstone Lake.

How to visit the park like a Nat Geo Explorer

A wildlife ecologist who studies the entire Greater Yellowstone region, National Geographic Explorer and UC Berkeley professor Arthur D. Middleton often ventures far off the beaten track on forays into the backcountry.

“From a wildlife standpoint, it’s the home of the most diverse and abundant—and certainly the highest diversity—of large mammals in the lower 48 states, if not all of North America,” says Middleton. 

One of his favorite places is the super-remote Triad Plateau in Yellowstone’s southeast corner. “It’s truly hard to get to, but up on the Triad you've got summering elk herds, you’ve got grizzly bears. You can see everything—the Wind River Mountains, the Tetons, the Gravelly Range up in Montana, the Big Horns. It’s just an incredible place.”

Because it’s so remote, Middleton spends two or three weeks at a time on the Triad Plateau and uses horses or mules to transport his team members, supplies, and research equipment.

For those with less time or stamina, Middleton recommends much shorter hikes in the Lamar or Hayden Valleys. “Anything that gets you a little bit of elevation so that you could sit down with some binoculars and just look around.”

Top experiences in Yellowstone

Tucked up on the northwest corner of Wyoming with parts spilling over into Montana and Idaho, the massive park offers five different approaches that feed into the Grand Loop Road, a figure-eight highway in the middle of the park. Rather than a single focus, Yellowstone has five main hubs—Old Faithful, Grant Village, Lake Village, Canyon Village, and Mammoth Hot Springs—each of them linked to a unique geological or geographical phenomenon.

The most impressive entry is from Gardiner, Montana, in the northwest, a road that ducks beneath the famous Roosevelt Arch and meanders along the Gardiner River to Mammoth Hot Springs and the park headquarters.

As the name implies, Canyon Village lies on the edge of the park’s biggest “ditch”—the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone—which stretches 24 miles and rises as much as 1,200 feet above the Yellowstone River. 

Continuing the clockwise journey around the Grand Loop, the road climbs up the river valley to Yellowstone Lake. The largest high-altitude lake in North America, the sky-blue pool offers the park’s best opportunities for boating, fishing, and waterfront camping. Given the lake’s chilly water, even during the height of summer, swimming is discouraged. Bridge Bay Marina offers rental boats, guided fishing charters, and scenic lake cruises, as well as shuttle services to remote campsites along the 141-mile (227-km) lakeshore.

Turning to the west, the Grand Loop cuts across the Continental Divide (and into the Pacific drainage) at two different points before cruising downhill into Old Faithful Village and the park’s largest cluster of visitor services. The main event: Old Faithful Geyser, which erupts around 17 times per day to an average height of 130 feet. Visitors can learn more about the geothermal forces at the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center and then hike the Upper Geyser Basin along the Firehole River, home to around 60 percent of the world’s geysers. Curving around to the west, the road continues to other geothermal wonders like the Midway Geyser Basin and its Grand Prismatic Spring and the Lower Geyser Basin with its Fountain Paint Pot.

The Grand Loop continues to Norris Geyser Basin, where geological wonders like Artist Paint Pots, Roaring Mountain, and Steamboat Geyser are complemented by the indoor exhibits of the Museum of the National Park Ranger and Norris Geyser Basin Museum with its distinctive 1920s “parkitecture.” Visitors can also explore the eerie Norris-Canyon Blowdown with its ghost trees or fly fish for trout in the swift-flowing Gibson River.

Come winter, most Yellowstone roads are closed to vehicular traffic. But it’s still possible to explore the park via a range of “snowover” adventures like ranger-led snowshoe walks at Mammoth, Old Faithful, and West Yellowstone; cross-country ski trails; and guided snowmobile and snowcoach tours.

Yellowstone Forever— the official nonprofit partner of Yellowstone National Park—offers seasonal workshops and field seminars ranging from wildlife photography and tracking to watercolor painting, beginner fly fishing, backcountry skills, and understanding wolves.

Best things to do for families

Grizzly bears, bison, and gray wolves are the most popular species for wildlife spotting, but families will be just as thrilled to spy badgers, bighorn sheep, beavers, and river otters.

From Old Faithful Geyser to the rainbow-colored Grand Prismatic Spring, the park’s hydrothermal wonders also fascinate kids—especially when they learn these bubbling, steaming, hissing, sometimes stinky features are produced by a supervolcano that underlies the entire region and last erupted around 640,000 years ago.

Plenty of hiking trails are family friendly. Short, flat, and largely raised on wooden boardwalks, the Upper Geyser Basin beyond Old Faithful and the Midway Geyser Basin around the Grand Prismatic Spring offer great walks for even the smallest kids.

During the summer, rent a bike from Old Faithful Snow Lodge (Memorial Day to Labor Day) and cruise easy bike routes like Morning Glory and the Daisy Cut-Off to Biscuit Basin. Or bring your own cycles in the spring and fall, when many of the park’s major roads are closed to vehicle traffic but open to bikes.

Other family-friendly summer activities include horseback riding, fishing, and boating. Once the snow starts to fall, families can explore the park on cross-country skis or snowshoes, snowcoach tours, or guided snowmobile adventures (age 6+ to ride with a parent; age 16+ to drive).

“We have a seven-year-old and a five-year-old,” says Nat Geo Explorer Arthur Middleton, “and whenever we drive through the park I tell them it’s time to turn off their tablets and watch the Yellowstone show. They really like to see the bison and we usually see a grizzly bear.”

(Why Yellowstone in the off-season is great for families.)

Where to stay

Hotels: Old Faithful Inn is the world’s largest log structure and an icon of American national park architecture. Lake Yellowstone Hotel is the park’s oldest hotel. Established in 1937, Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel features motel-style rooms and cabins. Six other lodges and hotels are scattered across the park, and there are scores of overnight choices in the gateway towns of West Yellowstone and Gardiner, as well as the Yellowstone River Valley between Gardiner and Bozeman. 

Camping: The park includes 12 developed campgrounds with more than 2,000 individual campsites. Five of them are managed by and must be reserved through concessionaire Yellowstone National Park Lodges (Canyon, Grant Village, Madison, Bridge Bay, and Fishing Bridge RV Park), while the others are reservable through Recreation.gov.

Backpackers can crash at 293 designated backcountry campsites equipped with food storage poles or boxes to keep the bears and other wildlife from midnight snacking. Although not required, many of these sites are available via advanced reservations at Recreation.gov.

However, backcountry permits are mandatory for all overnight stays in the Yellowstone wilderness. Permits can be obtained online year-round at Recreation.gov or walk-up during the May-October peak season at backcountry offices inside most of the park’s visitors centers.

Here’s what else you need to know

Entering the park: There are five ways to enter: the North Entrance in Gardiner, Montana; the Northwest Entrance near Cooke City, Montana; the West Entrance in West Yellowstone, Montana; the East Entrance on the North Fork Highway from Cody, Wyoming; and the South Entrance on the highway from Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

When to visit: The park is open year-round, although some facilities and activities are only available during the peak season of May-October. With daytime temperatures ranging between zero to 20˚F (-18˚C to -7˚C), winters are brutal but beautiful. The park’s high elevation means it occasionally snows in the spring and autumn too. That same altitude blesses summers with incredibly mild weather, with daytime temperatures usually between 70˚ to 80˚F (21˚ to 27˚C). Refer to the park’s Current Weather Conditions webpage for the latest news .

“I just love the spring,” says Arthur Middleton, “where the bright green flush of vegetation meets the receding snow line and you have that really rich color palette.”

Closures: Most park roads are closed to civilian vehicular traffic in winter. Check out the latest road, trail, wildlife, and wildfire situations on park’s Current Conditions webpage.

Fishing: Yellowstone’s fishing season runs from late May to late October. Anglers aged 16 and older require a Yellowstone National Park Fishing Permit for all the park’s lakes, ponds, rivers, or streams. Those 15 and under don’t need a permit if they are accompanied by an adult who has one. Permits can be purchased at the Recreation.gov Yellowstone fishing webpage.

Swimming: Soaking in hot springs and other hydrothermal features is strictly forbidden for health and safety reasons. Swimming is prohibited in the Boiling River and Bridge Bay Marina Channel on Yellowstone Lake. The park’s only designated swimming and wading spot is the Firehole Swim Area near Madison Junction (summer only).

Remote control aircraft: Drones, model airplanes, and other unmanned aircraft are prohibited everywhere in the park.

Are pets allowed?

With so much wildlife wandering around Yellowstone—and the potential threat that poses to both domestic and wild animals—pets are only allowed in developed areas like campgrounds, lodges, and parking areas, and must be physically controlled at all times by a leash, cage, or vehicle. Owners must dispose of all pet waste. The same applies to all service animals.

How accessible is Yellowstone?

With so many historic structures dating back more than a century, not everything in Yellowstone National Park is fully accessible. Six of the nine visitor centers are accessible, as are many walkways and self-guided trails, the three medical clinics, two fishing platforms and boating facilities on Yellowstone Lake, many roadside exhibits and viewpoints, and most food outlets. In addition to at least one accessible campsite at each of the 12 developed campgrounds, two backcountry sites are also accessible. Wheelchair loans/rentals are offered at six visitors centers and all but one lodge. For more information on accessibility, refer to the park’s Wheelchair and Mobility webpage.