Wyoming

Wyoming is home to Yellowstone National Park, America’s Serengeti. Yellowstone’s 10,000 thermal features, half of all the geo-thermal features in the world, offer visitors a truly unique landscape. Waterfalls spill into rivers, steam from deep in the earth erupts from geysers, mud pots bubble, water pushes up through surface cracks forming mineral terraces, and steam vents send plumes high into the sky. Wildlife thrives in the park, including bison, elk, wolves, grizzly and black bears, eagles, big horn sheep, mountain goats, osprey and coyotes. The 3,468 square mile (8,980 square km) park includes Yellowstone Lake, one of the largest alpine lakes in North America. 

Grand Teton National Park, directly south of Yellowstone, is known for the distinctive skyline of its mountain range – The Tetons. This young mountain range is still growing even though its peaks rise nearly 14,000 feet in elevation. At the base of the Tetons, the Snake River winds its way across the grassy valley known as Jackson Hole. The town of Jackson, where elk antler arches adorn the town square, is the southern gateway to both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. 

Wyoming is known as the “Cowboy State” and Yellowstone’s eastern gateway is Cody, where there’s a rodeo every night during summer and you can see cowboys ride bulls and bucking broncos See wild horses run free on desert plateaus of sagebrush and tumbleweed, or discover the magic of quiet, night skies filled with stars. Cody’s Buffalo Bill Historical Centre, also called the Smithsonian of the West, is a must see attraction. Five incredible museums explore the history of the American West, Western art, American firearms, Plains Indian peoples, and Greater Yellowstone’s natural history.

In northeastern Wyoming, Devils Tower, the first national monument in the US, rises sharply from the plains at the edge of the Black Hills. The tower, a sacred site for Native Americans, is a mystery to scientists who are divided about its origins, but many say it is the result of erosion and wind exposing the ‘neck’ of a long extinct volcano.