11 Best Sights in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

You can reach Yellowstone's largest hot spring, 370 feet in diameter and arguably an even more dazzling sight than Old Faithful, by following a ⅓-mile boardwalk loop. The spring, in the Midway Geyser Basin, is deep blue in color, with yellow and orange rings formed by bacteria that give it the effect of a prism. For a stunning perspective, view it from the overlook along the Fairy Falls Trail.

Multicolor travertine terraces formed by slowly escaping hot mineral water mark this unusual geological formation, one of the most remarkable sights in the park. You can explore the terraces via an elaborate network of boardwalks, the best of which is the Lower Terrace Interpretive Trail. If you head uphill from Liberty Cap, near the lower parking area, in a half-hour you'll pass bright and ornately terraced Minerva Spring, and in an hour you can make your way up to the Main Terrace Overlook and the side trail to Canary Spring. Along the way you might spot elk grazing nearby. Alternatively, you can drive up to the Main Terrace Overlook on Upper Terrace Drive and hike down to the Lower Terrace. Distances are fairly short amid these terraces, but give yourself at least a couple of hours to thoroughly explore them—especially if you enjoy taking lots of pictures.

Almost every park visitor makes it a point to view the world's most famous geyser, at least once. Yellowstone's most predictable big geyser—although neither its largest nor most regular—sometimes shoots as high as 180 feet, but it averages 130 feet. The eruptions take place every 50–120 minutes, the average is around 94 minutes. Check the park website, visitor center, or the lobbies of the Old Faithful hotels for predicted times. You can view the eruption from a bench just yards away, from the dining room at the lodge cafeteria, or the second-floor deck of the Old Faithful Inn. The 1.6-mile loop hike to Observation Point yields yet another view—from above—of the geyser and the surrounding basin.

The primary Yellowstone caldera was created by one massive volcanic eruption, but a later eruption formed the West Thumb, an unusual and particularly photogenic geyser basin because its active geothermal features are on the shore of Yellowstone Lake. Two boardwalks loop through the basin and showcase a number of sites, including the stunning blue-green Abyss Pool and Fishing Cone, where fishermen used to drop their freshly caught fish straight into boiling water without ever taking it off the hook. This area is popular in winter, when you can take advantage of the nearby warming hut and stroll around the geyser basin before continuing your trip via snowcoach or snowmobile.

A short drive north of Old Faithful and accessed via an easy ⅔-mile loop stroll, this basin is also the trailhead for the Mystic Falls Trail. The namesake "biscuit" formations were reduced to crumbs when Sapphire Pool erupted after the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake. Now, Sapphire is a calm, beautiful blue pool again, but that could change at any moment.

There are a dozen hot springs and geysers nearly opposite the cloverleaf entrance from Grand Loop Road to Old Faithful. Emerald Pool is one of the prettiest. It's an easy 1½-mile walk, ski, or bike ride from the Old Faithful area, or you can drive and park right in the middle of the basin.

With its mighty blasts of water shooting as high as 200 feet, the Great Fountain Geyser is this basin's superstar. When it spews, waves cascade down the terraces that form its edge. Check at the Old Faithful Visitor Center for predicted eruption times. Less impressive but more regular is White Dome Geyser, which shoots from a 20-foot-tall cone. You'll also find pink mudpots and blue pools at the basin's Fountain Paint Pots, a unique spot because visitors encounter all four of Yellowstone's hydrothermal features: fumaroles, mudpots, hot springs, and geysers.

Called "Hell's Half Acre" by writer Rudyard Kipling, Midway Geyser Basin contains the breathtaking Grand Prismatic Spring and is an even more interesting stop than Lower Geyser Basin. Boardwalks wind their way to the Excelsior Geyser, which deposits 4,000 gallons of vivid blue water per minute into the Firehole River.

Shaped somewhat like a morning glory, this pool once was a deep blue, but the color is no longer as striking as before due to tourists dropping coins and other debris into the hole. To reach the pool, follow the boardwalk past Geyser Hill Loop and stately Castle Geyser, which has the biggest cone in Yellowstone. Morning Glory is the inspiration for popular children's author Jan Brett's story Hedgie Blasts Off, in which a hedgehog travels to another planet to unclog a geyser damaged by space tourists' debris.

From the 1930 Norris Ranger Station, which houses a small museum that helps to explain the basin's geothermal activity, you can stroll a network of short boardwalk trails—some of them suitable for wheelchairs—to Porcelain Basin, Back Basin, and several geysers and other interesting and constantly evolving thermal features.

This is one of the easiest waterfalls to see from the roadside; you can also view volcanic pinnacles here. Tower Creek plunges 132 feet at this waterfall to join the Yellowstone River. While a trail that used to go to the base of the falls has washed out, it will take trekkers down to the river.