Prior to this visit to Yellowstone I’d completed maybe two hikes in my life.

There is no surviving piece of the American West more iconic than Yellowstone.

When you think about the Last of the Old West, images of run-down saloons and broken wagon wheels might materialize in your imagination.

If the National Parks Service was the best idea America ever had, then Yellowstone -- the first national park not only in the US but in the world -- is its crowning achievement.

It is illegal to sleep overnight in Yellowstone’s parking lots or picnic grounds -- a fun fact I learned on my previous visit four years ago, when a park ranger woke me with a loud rap on my car window and abruptly asked me to move.

Yellowstone is a park for all seasons.

When pressed to reveal which restaurants in Yellowstone serve the best food, a number of park volunteers and seasonal employees -- even the ones employed at the food-serving places -- tactfully demurred that they enjoyed trout fishing for their lunch, or that they often brought meals from home.