It is tempting to think of Yellowstone National Park as a huge drive-thru zoo, a sort of San Diego Wild Animal Park writ large. Park your vehicle and you’ll soon discover – as my wife, infant son, mom and dad did this past spring – that there is no better way to experience Greater Yellowstone than via self-propelled exploration.

Since less than one percent of Yellowstone visitors apply for a backcountry use permit, it’s easy to ditch the masses and discover your own private Wonderland, as early explorers dubbed the region. To enrich your experience even further, join a NPS Ranger-led Adventure hike.

What follows is a sampler of my family’s favorite kid-friendly Yellowstone excursions, arranged from easiest to most challenging. All these hikes feature easy access to Yellowstone’s most famous superlatives: the world’s greatest concentration of hyperactive thermal features and plenty of opportunities to spot some of the region’s abundant free-roaming wildlife.

[Follow the links below to related sections of my book.]

Historic Mammoth Hot Springs and boardwalk loops
Start your counterclockwise tour of Yellowstone’s Grand Loop Road in the parks’ top left corner, at the NPS headquarters, Mammoth Hot Springs. After a brief self-guided spin around the Fort Yellowstone Historic District – where you’ll learn about the US Army’s 1886-1918 stewardship of the world’s first national park – head for the adjacent hot spring terraces, steering clear of resident elk who blanket the lawns during the autumn rut.

A network of handicap-accessible boardwalks offers an intimate look at northern Yellowstone’s most approachable thermal area. While the park’s most famous geysers, like Old Faithful, wow audiences with their dramatic antics and instantly gratifying performances, the sculptural nature of Mammoth’s mercurial hot-spring terraces are impressive more for their development on a geologic time scale. Impatient kids love the steam, gurgling and Dr. Seuss-like sinter formations.

Old Faithful, bragging rights and a must-see icon
If you haven’t seen the most famous geyser in the world’s most active geyser basin, can you really say that you’ve visited Yellowstone?

Visit Old Faithful during the full moon or make the 1-mile climb to Observation Point for a unique perspective on the iconic grand dame and an expansive panorama of the steamy Upper Geyser Basin. Time your visit with an eruption (the average interval hovers around 90 minutes) by checking the predicted schedule at a Visitor Center. If you’ve got time to kill, grab a snack or drink, and check out the lobby and whimsical parkitecture of the Old Faithful Inn.

Old Faithful Tips: If you’re staying at the Inn, ask about joining the bellhops as they raise and lower the flags each morning and evening – two lucky guests get to climb into the Crow’s Nest most days, which is otherwise off limits. Even-numbered rooms in the east wing of the “Old House” face the geyser, but the views can be obscured on the lower level by lodgepole pine saplings.

One little-known way to score a last-minute room at the Inn is by calling to inquire if there are any handicap-accessible rooms – by law, they are released to the general public inside of two weeks of the check-in date.

Lone Star Geyser, the antithesis of Old Faithful experience
For the antithesis of the crowded Old Faithful geyser gazing experience, take a well-shaded stroll or 15-minute bike ride along a flat, abandoned road that traces the Firehole River to one of Yellowstone’s most dependable and impressive backcountry geysers.

You may hear Lone Star Geyser before you actually see its sparkling jet of skyward water. Between eruptions, during its noisy steam phase, the massive geyser cone can be heard more than a mile away. Regular eruptions, which usually last 20-30 minutes, begin about every 3 hours, with minor eruptions around 30 minutes prior to the main event. Splashing preplay starts up to an hour before eruptions. The Old Faithful Visitor Center posts eruption predictions. With kids in tow, pack a picnic and allow a couple of hours for a leisurely 2.5-mile hike in.

For an unforgettable first night in the wilderness, camp out just beyond – yet within earshot of – the geyser basin at one of the three nearby OA-series backcountry campsites (permit and reservation required) along the Shoshone Lake Trail. Moonlight hiking along the paved trail to Lone Star is another frisson-inducing option.

There’s something positively primeval about Yellowstone that energizes all ages and generations. Maybe it’s the strident bugles of mating elk that echo across the broad valleys in the fall, or the sulphurous, rotten-egg odors that pervade many thermal areas. In any case, the sense that the Earth’s superheated molten core is uniquely close to the park’s surface is always palpable.

In the early 1800s, when pioneering mountain men dispatched dramatic reports about the region’s “thundering volcanoes” and hyperactive hydrothermal features to their editors back East, the response was uniformly, “Sorry, we don’t publish fiction.”

Rambling around a small slice of this 2.2-million-acre park’s wild assortment of otherworldly attractions never fails to reveal that Yellowstone is indeed larger than life.

About the Author
Andrew Dean Nystrom has contributed text and images to two dozen Fodor’s and Lonely Planet travel guidebooks, covering locales as varied as Antarctica, Alaska, Mexico, Bolivia, the US Southwest, and Argentine and Chilean Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. When not out rambling, he nests with his wife and son near a wild stretch of Los Angeles River. By day, he’s Senior Producer of the Los Angeles Times Travel website. Email him your Yellowstone and Grand Teton trip planning questions and feedback via yellowstonehiker @ gmail.com

By Andrew Dean Nystrom, author of the National Outdoor Book
Award-winning Top Trails Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks: Must-Do Hikes for Everyone (Wilderness Press; 2nd edition forthcoming Spring 2009)

[This story appeared in the July 2008 issue of the LongitudeBooks.com monthly e-newsletter. All photos in the post are courtesy of the National Park Service.]