Yellowstone Breeds Tourons

Of 63 national parks in the United States, Yellowstone was the seventh most visited in 2022 with just over 3.2 million visitors. It held the #3 spot in 2021, before 2022 flooding reduced capacity. I planned our Yellowstone trip for the exact week in June when storms caused unprecedented damage, so I rescheduled it for mid-September, excited for less crowds in the early fall.

Tourists often lose their minds a little bit, and Yellowstone seems to breed poor decisions. Established in 1872 as the first national park, there has been ample time to document bad Yellowstone behavior. Check out one of our favorite compilations: Stupid Yellowstone Behavior: Top 10 – YouTube. There is even a name for these people: tourons (tourist + moron).

Here was our experience with tourons, thankfully it was comical!

Camping or Jail

We had a reservation for a campground inside the park. We have camped a lot, and have never experienced such an intimidating, bureaucratic registration process. Since I was driving, Cody hopped out of the van and went into the office. Twenty minutes later he returned and told me to go in, since the reservation was under my first name (we share the same last name).

I trotted over to the door and opened it to six or seven people crowded in a small space containing two check-in counters. As I waited, I took in the 1960s-looking posters, faux dark wood partitions with Formica counter tops, and thrift store-looking desks in the background. It looked tired, like the employees. Each person checking in was given a lengthy spiel.

When it was my turn, a brusque, uniformed woman told me she was hungry and pointed to microwaved frozen meal. I told her it smelled good, and she admonished its high sodium content but it was the only thing she had. I wondered if I should tell her to eat, I’ll wait? Suddenly she snapped into rote work mode and asked what I heard six times while I waited my turn, “have you camped inside Yellowstone before? No? These are the rules you must follow. I will read them to you, and you will raise your right hand and swear not to break them. Then you will sign this document.”

In a robotic voice she recited a long list of typical campground rules, including not to leave any food, including scraps, outside at any time. The difference from other registrations was the detail on specific federal regulations and punishments. Basically, if you left a noodle on the ground you’d be thrown in jail and fined thousands of dollars. I had to agree that I would review the rules with everyone in my party and that they would comply. In all my years of travel I’ve never been made to feel like such a criminal before doing anything wrong!  

That night I followed Skye around the campsite as she munched on chips and graham crackers, terrified she’d drop a visible crumb and we’d lose our freedom and retirement. Obviously, the robust registration process was born out of a century and a half of stupid Yellowstone behavior.

Breakfast Crashers

We left the campground before breakfast with a plan to find a picturesque spot to park, cook, and eat. We found a forested loop on a peninsula of Yellowstone Lake with scattered turnoffs and picnic tables. We were delighted to be the only people there and pulled into a sunny spot with a picnic table overlooking the lake.

It was a chilly morning, so Cody and Skye stayed in the van while I prepared breakfast. After a few minutes I looked up and saw a middle-aged couple sitting at “our” picnic table, unpacking their breakfast. What the heck, where did they come from? We looked around and saw a car parked several hundred feet away at one of the other turnoffs. Really? They walked over and stole the picnic table 10 feet from our van?

Annoyed, we decided to leave. But first I wanted to be sure they knew that someone was in the van they sat next to, so I strapped up our dog and took her out on a short loop around the picnic table. As I passed them the woman said sheepishly in a European accent “it is cold out here, we wanted a picnic table in the sun.” I curtly told her that we did too, but we would move on and find a different spot so they could enjoy their breakfast. They did us a favor as we found a much better spot down the road, but that was some rude Yellowstone behavior.

Slow Hazard 

After sleeping in West Yellowstone and entering the park from the West Entrance, we spent an excruciating hour behind a woman going 20-mph in a 45-mph zone, sometimes less, for nearly 30 miles, more than doubling our time on what should have been an easy drive on straight, flat terrain. Cars piled up behind us to what looked like hundreds. She ignored numerous “slow vehicle turnoff” signs.

We were behind her for so long we went through stages of grief! First mild annoyance, then exasperation, then anger, then resolution, then humor. We turned it into a game in which we made up her voice and the reasons why she was going so slow. By the time she finally turned off the main road she had a whole fictitious life with a cast of support characters, and to this day Skye brings her up when we’re on long car rides. She’ll never know that her inconsiderate Yellowstone behavior lives on in our family adventures!

Parking Lot Pain

The parking lot at Grand Prismatic Spring paralyzed drivers unlike anywhere else in the park. It was one of our last stops, so we’d had days of experience by that point. We saw cars lined up on the road in both directions waiting to turn into the parking area. We assumed it was busy because it’s one of the major attractions and close to the west entrance. We joined the line as everyone did, regardless of if they planned to turn into the parking area since it blocked the road.

After making the turn and our way down the road to the parking lot, we saw WHY there was so much more traffic at this stop than the others. Drivers would stop at the entrance to the parking lot and wait there until they saw a car in the first row leave, then take their spot, ignoring that there was another row of parking that had open spots. Almost every single driver did this! We drove around the first row and parked in the second row. We climbed out of the van and watched drivers stop at the entrance to wait for someone to vacate a spot in the first row, while we stood in empty spots. This is pretty “tourony.” I’ve never seen this happen at Walmart!