Parents worry a little too much when they come to a place like Yellowstone. They hear that it is filled with bears and other deadly animals, and tend to think that it would be best to keep all the car windows rolled up at all times. But the animals are not actually out to get you, and it is not very hard to keep the family safe and have fun at the same time.
Understand that most of the animals will not actually come after you. You just need to give them their space. There are, however, some genuine dangers in Yellowstone that do not get enough attention, things that are really worth worrying about, where the safety of the kids is concerned.
Watch out for the water in the geyser basins. It is not just hot, but superheated. When people fall in, they are killed very quickly—and yet people have a false sense of security out among the geysers, since the environment does not look particularly unsafe. Keep a close eye on the kids, and make sure they stay on the boardwalks that the National Park Service has constructed in the geyser basins. Watch out for the family dogs, too. They may want to jump into that water.
Watch out for the hot water—and for the cold water, too. The rivers and lakes in Yellowstone look so pleasant that it is impossible to imagine them as a threat. The water is, however, so cold that it is hard to survive in it very long, and the water in the rivers is often moving very fast.
But the worst threat is the least “natural” one of all: the traffic on the roads. It is a threat to the whole family. People do some crazy driving in Yellowstone. They will stop dead in traffic, and an entire family will spill out the minivan doors to get a look at the moose. They drive with their eyes far away from the road; they will see nothing wrong in taking photos while behind the wheel. They go either too fast or too slow, and are unaware that drifting into oncoming traffic on a blind mountain curve can be a bad thing. Do your driving in Yellowstone with maximum defensiveness.
