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Is Traveling to Every Country in the World a Worthy Cause? This Group Thinks So.

I tagged along on a surreal trip to a conflict zone in Azerbaijan with a group of explorers attempting to see every country on the planet. No matter that the war there wasn’t over yet.

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How to Turn Your Dog Into a Proper Adventure Pup

With a couple great products, and some common sense, you’ll be ready to take your pet on your next adventure outing

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How to Keep Your Chin Up When It Hurts

When John Orth, a violin maker from Colorado, set out to break his own world record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours, he had no idea he was competing against a college kid from Virginia

Tourists Behaving Badly in National Parks

I Went to Yellowstone National Park to Learn Why It Turns Tourists into Morons

Petting bison, cooking food in geysers. Ride along with our writer on a wild trip to our nation’s most iconic national park at the height of tourist season to see all the bad behavior.

Let me establish my tourist bona fides before we go any further. I am a 47-year-old white man who has lived in the suburbs for the vast majority of my existence. I have spent a grand total of one week camping. I consider emptying the dishwasher to be hard labor. I don’t know how to pitch a tent, build a lean-to, start a fire without matches or a lighter, or climb any rock higher than three feet tall. I am not hardy. The only other time that Outside asked me to write for them, it was to review bathrobes, which are generally not worn outside. I own both cargo shorts and a fanny pack.

Finally, I am an American. Nothing screams “tourist” more than being a big, stupid American.

And I am legion. The U.S. has a near-infinite supply of clueless tourists such as myself, much to the dismay of our National Park Service. Yellowstone, our most famous national park thanks to Kevin Costner, welcomes 4.5 million of us each year. Like all of our parks, Yellowstone takes in tourists not only for the revenue but to remind them that the physical country they reside in is a marvel well beyond their comprehension. As such, Yellowstone is set up to accommodate these hordes. And while park officials do their best to keep tourists in line, often literally, my kind still manage to do plenty of tourist shit. We trample plant life. We get shitfaced and pick unwinnable fights with animals ten times our size. And we hurt ourselves. According to NPS data, at least 74 people have died while visiting Yellowstone in the past 15 years. I could have been one of those people. I deserve to be one of those people.

This is why Outside sent me to the park just a few weeks ago, during one of the busiest times of the year. They wanted me to observe our most basic tourists in the wild. Maybe I’d even get to see one die. Or, even better for my editors, maybe I would die while I was there. Maybe I’d look down my nose at the tourists around me only to end up as wolf food myself. Like most other Yellowstone visitors, I was not trained for the outdoors, I relish doing shit that posted signs yell at me not to do, and I often daydream about fighting bears (and winning!). I find danger tempting, which isn’t a good thing given that I can no longer swim a single pool lap without taking a break. Are people like me responsible enough to visit one of our national treasures without breaking it? Do we, as a population, know how to do national parks?

There was only one way to find out: by going into the park and behaving like an idiot.

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November/December 2024

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