Best Things to Do in Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone combines two worlds that exist nowhere else together on Earth: the planet's largest concentration of geysers and rainbow hot springs alongside North America's greatest free-roaming megafauna ecosystem. Here are the ten experiences that define a visit.

1. Watch Old Faithful erupt & walk the 4km Upper Geyser Basin boardwalk to Morning Glory Pool. Check the predicted eruption window at the Visitor Center, tour the 7-storey log lobby of the 1904 Old Faithful Inn, and walk past 150 geysers to emerald-and-gold Morning Glory Pool.
2. Hike to the Fairy Falls Overlook above Grand Prismatic Spring. Walk 20 minutes up a gentle hillside trail to look straight down on the 112-metre-wide rainbow rings of America's largest hot spring.
3. Stand at Artist Point & the Brink of the Lower Falls. Marvel at the 94-metre waterfall thundering into a 300-metre-deep canyon of hydrothermally altered yellow and crimson rock.
4. Go on a dawn wildlife safari in Lamar Valley & Hayden Valley. Bring binoculars at first light to spot thousands of plains bison, pronghorn, grizzly bears, black bears and the Junction Butte or Wapiti Lake wolf packs.

5. Walk the steaming limestone staircases of Mammoth Hot Springs & the 1903 Roosevelt Arch. Explore Canary Spring, Palette Spring and Liberty Cap, then watch elk graze on the lawns of 1891 Fort Yellowstone.
6. Explore Norris Geyser Basin (home to the world's tallest active geyser, Steamboat Geyser). Walk the otherworldly milky-blue acidic flats of Porcelain Basin and the bubbling mud pots of Artists Paintpots.
7. Stroll lakeside West Thumb Geyser Basin on Yellowstone Lake & see Dragon's Mouth Spring. See underwater hydrothermal cones glowing turquoise right inside the shoreline of North America's largest high-elevation lake.
8. Hike to 60-Metre Fairy Falls, Mystic Falls or the 3,122m Summit of Mount Washburn. Step away from the boardwalk crowds onto Yellowstone's best 2-to-3-hour forest and ridge trails.

9. Drive the sky-high switchbacks of the 3,337-Metre Beartooth Highway (US-212). Exit the Northeast Entrance to drive across alpine tundra lakes and summer snowfields to Red Lodge.
10. Pair Yellowstone with Grand Teton National Park & Jackson Hole (15 Mins South). Drive the John D. Rockefeller Parkway south to Jenny Lake, Oxbow Bend and Mormon Row.