Elk, geysers, and bears, oh my! A trip inside Yellowstone, the world’s first national park

The beautiful national park is in the western state of Wyoming

Today's expression: Pull over
Explore more: Lesson #294
September 14, 2020:

Yellowstone National Park draws in millions of tourists every year with its beautiful landscapes, boiling mud, and the many animals that roam there. With more than 10,000 hydrothermal features throughout the park, it is a hot spot – literally. You can see, smell, and hear the hydrothermal activity as you make your way through the park. Plus, learn the English expression "pull over."

Take control of your English

Use active strategies to finally go from good to great

Listen

  • Learning speed
  • Full speed

Learn

TranscriptActivitiesDig deeperYour turn
No translationsEspañol中文FrançaisPortuguês日本語ItalianoDeutschTürkçePolski

On today’s lesson, we’ll travel to the world’s first national park: Yellowstone

Lesson summary

Hi there, I’m Jeff, and I’d like to say welcome to Plain English lesson number 294. JR is the producer and the full lesson can be found online at PlainEnglish.com/294.

Coming up today: another installment in our occasional series of destinations in the English-speaking world. Today, I’ll take you to Yellowstone National Park—America’s first national park in the western state of Wyoming. This is going to be an easy one for me because this is where I just went on vacation! I spent three days in Yellowstone and visited some other big parks on the way to and from Yellowstone. In fact, I wrote this lesson during a rest day I took in a nearby town in Wyoming.

Destination: Yellowstone National Park

For decades, it was a blank spot on the map of the American west: guarded on three sides by mountain ranges, and at an altitude of between six and eight thousand feet above sea level, this was an untouched area as Americans moved west and filled out their country’s interior. In the early 1800s, rumors of a beautiful landscape, boiling mud, steaming rivers and petrified trees reached the ears of settlers in other areas, but most people didn’t believe they could be true.

They were all true, and more: in the late 1860s, six decades later, privately-funded explorers and the US Army detailed the magnificent geography of the area now known as Yellowstone National Park. In 1871, the US Congress passed a law establishing the area as a protected national park “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people”—the first in America’s history and the first in world history.

Yellowstone was created by three massive volcanic eruptions: one two million years ago, another about 1.3 million years ago, and a third 640,000 years ago. Each eruption changed the landscape, leaving us with a rich variety of mountains, valleys, canyons, rivers, waterfalls, and hydrothermal elements.

The hydrothermal elements are what make Yellowstone famous, and the most famous hydrothermal element is the geyser known as Old Faithful. In a geyser, cold water and hot, compressed water mix below the surface, building up pressure in the complex plumbing beneath the earth’s surface. When the pressure is too great, water shoots out from under the earth up into the air.

The geyser known as Old Faithful has erupted about 20 times per day, every day, since the park was discovered—and probably for a long time before that. Each eruption happens 60 to 110 minutes after the previous one; an eruption lasts between ninety seconds and five minutes, and the hot water shoots up about 130 feet in the air. The geyser is so predictable that a ranger posts the next estimated eruption, and crowds form to watch it. Other geysers in the area are less predictable; some are bigger, some are more frequent.

There are many other hydrothermal features. The most common are steam vents: they look like mini volcanoes and steam pours out from them 24 hours a day. As you walk toward them, or drive near them, it looks like a building is on fire; instead, the earth is releasing hot water in the form of a column of steam. Mud pots are muddy ponds with gas from under the surface bubbling up, sometimes shooting mud up into the air. Thermal ponds have extremely hot water, often with their own springs or mini-geysers. The minerals and bacteria combine to give them a wide range of colors, from bright blue to dark orange.

These areas are a window into the complex world beneath the earth’s surface. The earth’s crust—the part of the planet that protects us from the heat deep below the surface—is very thin in these areas; the water and gas is heated by magma in the volcano below. Because of the pressure, the liquid water is far hotter than the boiling point on the surface.

Half of the world’s hydrothermal features are in Yellowstone National Park (ten thousand overall) and many are open today for visitors to get an up-close look. You can see the geysers erupt, smell the gas and minerals coming from the steam vents, and listen to the bubbling of the mud pots.

Elsewhere, the park is both well-preserved and accessible. The roads through the park form a large figure-eight. As you drive around, there are hundreds of opportunities to pull over and enjoy the park’s magnificent features. Yellowstone Lake is the largest high-elevation lake in North America. The Yellowstone River carved a huge canyon. Smaller rivers form dramatic waterfalls. Buffalo and elk graze in the valleys between the mountains. Bears, wolves, and countless other animals roam the forests.

The beauty of the park today is that visitors can experience as much or as little as they want. You can stay on paved roads and visit popular attractions and still see wildlife, waterfalls, canyons, and lakes. Or, with proper preparation, you can pack your tent and food and wander off into the wilderness for a multi-day camping trip. Many people choose to do something in between: combine the easy tourist sites with a little bit of light hiking or boating.

Over three million people visit the park every year. Most make their Yellowstone trip a long car trip from home. Yellowstone is in western Wyoming, where the distances are great—but that doesn’t stop people from all over the US from packing up the car and visiting.

A quick visit to Yellowstone

I spent three days in the park and I thought I saw a lot—but there is always more to discover. A large part of the park was closed when I was there. One section was closed because of fires and a mudslide. The other section was closed for construction—if the main road is closed, then all the attractions in that part of the park are off-limits. Part was closed because there was a carcass near a busy road—the carcass would attract hungry bears a little too close to popular tourist sites, so they closed the road until the carcass was fully consumed.

But still, even with three days, I did a mixture of easy attractions and some hikes. I got up one morning and walked a seven-mile trail around the rim of the huge Yellowstone canyon and had the place to myself for the first hour or two of my hike. It was really amazing.

And I’ll tell you something else—this was easy. For years, I thought that this is the sort of trip I’d have to plan way in advance, do a lot of research, carry detailed maps, buy all kinds of equipment. But it was easy. Between some good tour-guide apps on my phone and a little internet research, I was able to see everything I wanted in the park, and a lot I didn’t know existed. So if you’ve ever wanted to visit Yellowstone, I say—do it. Don’t be intimidated by it. Yes, you have to get there; that’s not easy. But if you can get there, then the rest is easy by comparison. There are five entrances to the park and there’s a small town at each entrance with hotels and services and restaurants—don’t expect luxury and a huge variety, but there are plenty of places to stay and get food and supplies nearby.

Learn English the way it’s really spoken

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

Starter feature

We speak your language

Learn English words faster with instant, built-in translations of key words into your language

QuizListeningPronunciationVocabularyGrammar

Free Member Content

Join free to unlock this feature

Get more from Plain English with a free membership


Starter feature

Test your listening skills

Make sure you’re hearing every word. Listen to an audio clip, write what you hear, and get immediate feedback


Starter feature

Upgrade your pronunciation

Record your voice, listen to yourself, and compare your pronunciation to a native speaker’s

Starter feature

Sharpen your listening

Drag the words into the correct spot in this interactive exercise based on the Plain English story you just heard


Starter feature

Improve your grammar

Practice choosing the right verb tense and preposition based on real-life situations



Free Member Content

Join free to unlock this feature

Get more from Plain English with a free membership

Plus+ feature

Practice sharing your opinion

Get involved in this story by sharing your opinion and discussing the topic with others

Expression: Pull over