Yellowstone, Wy/ID/Mt
Read Evan’s blog post about his trip to Yellowstone HERE
The first National Park in the country, and possibly the world, Yellowstone National Park was created to preserve the geothermal wonders such as geysers, steaming rocks and rivers, and mineral pools that occur on top of Yellowstone’s enormous supervolcano. The park area was an important and sacred place to twenty-six different Native American nations, including the Tukudika Shoshone who lived there year round. The US Government forcibly removed them from the land in the late 1800s, ignoring signed treaties, to make way for the park. Today wildlife is abundant in the park, including black and grizzly bears, coyotes, bald eagles, elk, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, and rebounding populations of bison (or buffalo) and wolves. Bison, the largest land animals in the Americas by weight (males can weigh up to 2,000 pounds!), can also be seen in the following parks: Grand Teton, Wind Cave, Badlands, and Theodore Roosevelt.