Last season Yellowstone National Park had a record year for number visitors, and it also had quite a few bad stories, too. There was the young bison that a tourist put in his car because it looked cold. There was a group of college-aged kids who wandered off the trail at Grand Prismatic Spring and were braggadocios about it on social media. Sadly, there was another young man who left the trail and never returned because he fell into a thermal spring and died. Plus you had hundreds of cases of the close encounters of the animal kind.

To kick off this 2017 season, YellowstonePark.com published a list of Bad Selfies. It is a humorous piece about what could be a very serious situation. Personally, I thing all tourists should be required to watch the Surviving Yellowstone National Park with Hank Patterson. If you haven't seen it, it basically says don't be a moron.

This new list from Yellowstone is much nicer. I can sum up all 5 items on the list into one simple sentence. Always be aware of your surroundings as nature is unpredictable. If there was an addendum it would read: keep on the trail and pack out your trash. It's just that Boy Scout mentality of leaving the land in better shape than when you found it.

In the article Bad Selfies: 5 Places Not to Pose in Yellowstone, they highlight some bad and often dangerous places to take selfies. Their top 5 are: next to a geyser, in lake Yellowstone, in a hot spring, on the edge of a canyon, near wildlife like bison, elk, or bears. It seems pretty obvious to me. Don't be a moron and respect the park.

 

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