You’re stuck at home, the national parks are closed, and cabin fever is setting in.
If you don’t mind a bit of computer clicking, Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park can be brought into your home with stunning photos and cute videos of bison jams or eagles soaring.
For real-time images, both parks offer webcams of fixed scenes of iconic views such as Old Faithful or the Teton Range. Some are less exciting, such as entrance gates. But while fairly static, webcams can offer useful information on weather conditions or how busy the traffic is. For example, Friday’s webcam at the West Entrance at West Yellowstone, Montana, showed a blocked gate and snow-covered road.
“Webcams are always popular, and lately we’ve been doing some Facebook Live events,” said Yellowstone park spokesman Linda Veress. “There is so much information on the park’s webpage, too. I am learning something new every time I’m on there.”
A good place to start online exploring in Yellowstone is at nps.gov/yell/learn.
For something a bit fancier than webcams, Yellowstone National Park has a 12-minute video, “Experience Yellowstone,” that shows nice images of many of the park’s iconic animals and beautiful scenic spaces. Although you’ll see crowds gathered around Old Faithful, you won’t have to jostle for a view to see over that 6-foot 5-inch tourist from New York City.
Yellowstone also has a series of a dozen “in depth” videos about five to 10 minutes long on a variety of subjects dear to park lovers. Learn about bears, wolves, geysers, invasive species, bison and goats. Other park video series include “Minute Out In It,” “Q&A,” “Inside Yellowstone,” “Visiting Yellowstone” and “Wildlife Safety.” Each series includes several short videos on a variety of topics. Enough to burn up a couple of hours.
To find Grand Teton National Park videos, go to the “Learn About the Park” section on the park’s official website and spend some time with all the offerings (nps.gov/grte/learn).
A couple of popular connections include “Podcasts and Cell Tours” and “Dispatches from the Field” which is Grand Teton’s own YouTube channel.
Grand Teton also offers “distance learning programs” available on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The program is a ready-made lesson for children (and adults) to learn about a variety of subjects that affect the park. Current topics include how snow impacts everything about the park. The programs are meant to augment school instruction.
There’s also a “Kids & Youth” section with an online activity book to occupy youngsters with a goal of achieving a Junior Park Ranger badge. It’s fun homework for sequestered families wondering what to do next.
Grand Teton also has a “Photo Gallery” that is divided up into mini-galleries with nice images of landscapes, animals, plants, history, visitors and education.
Of course, one can always search YouTube (a dangerous proposition) for interesting videos on Bison vs. Tourists or climbing the Grand Teton, but beware of quickly being lured away into cute cat videos or stupid human antics.
