Experience the best of Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone, established in 1872 and widely regarded as the first national park in the world, covers a high volcanic plateau mostly in north-western Wyoming. Beneath it lies a vast volcanic caldera that heats the ground and feeds more than ten thousand hot springs, geysers and steam vents. Old Faithful, which erupts about every ninety minutes, is the best-known geyser, and Grand Prismatic Spring is ringed with bands of orange, yellow and blue-green colour.

At the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the river drops over the Upper and Lower Falls, the latter 94 metres high, into a gorge walled in yellow rock. Yellowstone Lake, a huge high-altitude lake, lies at the park's centre. Mammoth Hot Springs forms white terraces in the north. Bison herds graze in the Hayden and Lamar valleys, along with elk, grizzly bears and wolves. Grand Teton National Park lies just to the south.

Bison burgers, trout and huckleberry ice cream are on the menus in the park's lodges and the gateway towns of Jackson, Cody, Gardiner and West Yellowstone. Summer is the busy season, with warm days and cool nights, autumn brings bugling elk and fewer people, and winter turns the park into a snowbound landscape of steaming vents.