Yellowstone National Park is Not Disney World

The summer of 2019, coming just after I completed grad school, seemed like the perfect time for a short-term move out to the American West. Having always been drawn to national parks and food service jobs, a serving position at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge fell right into place. Living in Old Faithful for six months a few things became clear: struggling with the elevation is real when you’re coming from sea-level (at least I’ll blame that as the reason I was out of breath on hikes for the first couple of months), the foul rotten egg smelling geysers made it hard to eat any kind of eggs in the employee dining room, and too many visitors thought the park was basically like Disney World under complete control.

One dinner shift, as I passed around dinner plates of bison tenderloin and wild game bolognese to a table, I began to ask them how their visit was going. They were enjoying their trip, having seen the Old Faithful geyser erupt, walked on the boardwalks of colorful hot springs, and even caught a glimpse of a grizzly bear in the Lamar Valley. But then they asked, with complete sincerity, when the rangers of the park let the animals out of their cages in the morning. These were people who had come into the park, experienced it for days, and still did not understand that the wildlife was, in fact, wild. I had to keep my jaw from dropping or bursting out laughing as I formulated a respectful response.

During another shift, a group of two families trudged into the restaurant completely beside themselves. They didn’t make it to the Old Faithful area until around 7:10pm and the famous geysers had spurted around 7 o’clock, slightly early but still pretty faithful to match its name. We caught wind that they would be joining us soon after hearing that they were complaining to the front desk of the hotel that they should have held the geyser for them.

I’ve also heard tales of visitors asking about lights being projected onto the geyser so they could see the thermal feature better at night, or for the famous geyser to erupt every hour on the hour instead of the average (but variable) 74 minutes. One time, some employees decided to play a trick on the tourists and bring a wheel and a rope out to the geyser and began to pull the wheel across the boardwalk as Old Faithful started erupting and didn’t stop until the geyser stopped.

Unfortunately the lack of knowledge some tourists boast on their trip can be dangerous. During my training when I arrived in the park, we spent an hour talking about how the park could kill you: acidic pools, extreme heat in geyser basins, extreme cold in Yellowstone lake, parasitic thermophiles, bears, bison, other wildlife, falling of cliffs, lightning, and the list goes on and on. In fact, there’s even a book accounting ways to die in the world’s first national park.

During my training, we were told that basically if you do what you are supposed to do in the park and follow regulations, you should be ok. The National Park Service has different general rules for safety in the park like staying on trails, hiking in groups of three or more while carrying bear spray, and keeping safe distances from the animals. But I noticed that all too often people either didn’t know the rules or just blatantly ignored the precautions put there to protect them. While I was living in the park, there were a couple situations of tourists being hit into the air by bison because they didn’t keep their distance from the animals. When some people enter national parks they think that because the space has management, everything must be safe. But national parks are not a zoo or Disney World. The animals have their natural instincts and despite the thoughts of my curious table one evening, they aren’t contained in cages and let out for the enjoyment of tourists everyday.

One afternoon after I had worked a breakfast shift, I was reading in my dorm room when I heard some deep grunting outside my window. Even just a glance towards the propped open glass revealed the presence of a couple of bison. They really are majestic animals. I creeped over towards the window and the body of one of the bison was close, nestled right on the other side of my thin screen window. There was this magical moment where I felt harmony with the bison as if there was this mutual respect. Their slow moving body language told the story that they were heading to lunch but not until they had a quick chat in the parking lot. They didn’t want to bother me so long as I didn’t want to bother them. It would’ve been easy for me to reach my hand out and pet the bison or grab a tuft of hair or walk out my door and take a close up selfie, or whatever people try to accomplish by getting so close to the massive mammals. Instead, I soaked in the moment from a safe spot and got to marvel in the beauty of these animals right outside my house.

I learned a lot the summer that I lived and worked in Yellowstone National Park. Now long drives seem easier, my pace of life has become (slightly) slower, and I’ve made friends to last a lifetime. But I also learned that many times travelers go to their destinations with ignorance of their surroundings or the situation, only hoping to see the main attractions while blindly following crowds and sometimes ignoring rules. A sustainable traveler cannot exist without the desire or drive to learn more about the destinations they are traveling to and recognizing that each place is unique. In Yellowstone National Park, a large part of that is respecting the wildlife, plants, and natural features in the park. All of these elements work together in a fragile ecosystem that make it the truly special place it is today. Who am I to compromise the conservation of the world’s first national park for a selfie?

How Yellowstone National Park taught me to be a more Lovable Traveler:

1. Research and seek out resources about/in the destination to determine what needs to be done to make the least negative impact. This is different in each destination because no two places are the same.

2. Before following what everyone is doing, ask if it follows recommended guidelines or if it could be potentially harmful

3. Recognize that the world doesn’t always revolve around you even if you’re on vacation. Some things (like a natural geyser or animal sightings) happen in their own time and consulting resources may help to harness these experiences.

4. Complaining and being nasty about things out of people’s control, like a geyser going off at the wrong time, will not help you. In fact, this will probably make you an unlovable traveler and employees will mock you behind closed doors. Also being nasty is just generally not a great start to being a lovable traveler.