Yellowstone National Park is just a cool place. If you’re not using it for anything in your geography and U.S. history courses, you’re missing out.
Here’s a ten-minute video that the producers hope you’ll show far and wide to encourage television stations to pick up the series. It’s a ten-minute pilot for “Travelers’ Tales,” featuring outdoor writer Tim Cahill, a founder of Outside magazine, and photographer Tom Murphy.
Here are some of the points you might use in class:
- Yellowstone in winter, especially the wildlife, like bison, elk and coyotes (all shown), and wolves (not shown)
- Volcanic geology — Yellowstone is the world’s largest caldera, after all
- Diversity of landforms in the U.S., or in the world. More than half the hot water features on the planet are in Yellowstone
- Travel and adventure
- What makes good writing (travel writing in this case)
- Western geography
- Development of the west, especially after the Lewis and Clark Expedition
The video features a lot of snow, elk, bison and coyotes, hot springs flowing into a river making swimming in January feasible, Mammoth Hot Springs and the travertine pools, and the cold northern desert of sagebrush and juniper.
Questions you might consider to turn this into a warm-up exercise (bell ringer):
Geography, not answered in the video (map or internet exercise):
- Yellowstone National Park covers parts of which three states?
- Yellowstone National Park is mostly located in which state?
- What is the most famous feature of Yellowstone National Park?
- Ashfall Beds State Park features ancient mammals killed by an eruption in the Yellowstone Caldera. Where is Ashfall Beds State Park?
- Thomas Moran played a key role in getting Congress to designate Yellowstone as a park. What did he do to help convince Congress to act?
Geography, answered in the video:
- What year was Yellowstone designated a National Park by Congress?
- What sort of volcanic feature is the entire Yellowstone area?
- The Yellowstone Caldera explodes catastrophically about every 600,000 years, according to some geologists. How long has it been since the last such catastrophic explosion?
- The wags say there are two seasons in Yellowstone, ______ and winter.
- What is a “hot pot?”
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Great memories, Ed! I was going to respond to the malaria post (from Rambodoc’s blog), but *oooh, shiny*, this caught my eye. Tim Cahill is a great travel writer. He is so right that travel writing is funniest when we talk of our misadventures or “adversity”. Actually, that applies to any writing, especially comedy.
Remember Cahill from his Outside Magazine days, along with David Quammen, and Jon Krakauer. They are the best. No longer subscribe to that magazine, but do buy their books. Thanks!
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