While the people we’ve encountered in campgrounds have, in general, been reasonable (you can’t really live this lifestyle without a modicum of common sense), we’ve seen what we will charitably call “inexplicable human behavior” in a number of places, most recently in Yellowstone Park. 

Yellowstone (America’s first national park) is beautiful, but it can also be hazardous if you don’t heed the many warnings of the NPS staff. They state it right on their website: “Think safety, act safely. Yellowstone is a dangerous place,” and the rangers repeat it over and over again (way more patiently and graciously than we would!). 

First…those geysers, hot springs, and bubbling mud pots are fascinating, but best observed from a safe distance. Take Grand Prismatic Spring, for example. The third-largest hot spring in the world, it’s 200-330 feet in diameter, more than 121 feet deep, filled with water that’s between 145.4 to 188.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and surrounded by a large microbial mat. We’re not sure which part of that description was not enough to deter folks from stepping off the boardwalk, but it happens.

At Old Faithful — again, very hot water, shooting straight up into the air, surrounded by a large microbial mat that could crack at any time — we watched a father of four small children walk right up to the edge of the geyser, snap a photo, and casually walk back to his family. We then watched him have some very long and involved convos with the rangers (in fact, when we left the park 30 minutes later, he was still being detained). 

Then…wild animals. According to the NPS website, “there are nearly 300 species of birds, 16 species of fish, five species of amphibians, six species of reptiles, and 67 species of mammals—including seven native ungulate species and two bear species.”  Did you know that Yellowstone is home to the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states? That means that human visitors are wandering through the homes of elk, bison, black and grizzly bears, deer, bighorn sheep, pronghorns, wolves, and so many more. There’s an Instagram account called Tourons of Yellowstone that captures some of the ways people forget that they are visitors, this is not a zoo, and the rangers are not kidding (neither are the bison – they may look funny but they don’t seem to have much of a sense of humor).

By the way, we loved our campground just outside the park. Yellowstone RV Park sits above the Yellowstone River, nestled in the surrounding hills. Our camper backed up to the river, and we watched bison and elk traverse the hills above us almost every day (we also saw elk in the dog park area of the campground but kept our distance!)