Hiking with a Ranger
The folks who know the most about Yellowstone National Park are the ones there everyday: the Park Rangers. We're huge fans of talks and hikes led by Rangers and try to make one during every trip to the Park.

While in Canyon we'd recommend the "Walking the Edge" hike, which lasts for 90 minutes and takes you along the South Rim Trail in a relatively easy one-mile walk. Along the way a Park Ranger will point out highlights; you'll get good views of the Upper and Lower Falls, the totality of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and more. The tour begins at Uncle Tom's Parking Lot (which is shown on the Yellowstone map given when you enter the Park) daily at 3 p.m.

While at Old Faithful Inn we'd recommend the "Geyser Hill Walk," which leaves daily at 8:30 a.m. from the temporary Old Faithful Visitor Center. True, you can have a perfectly good time walking through the Old Faithful geyser basins on your own. But a Ranger can fill in the details and history about each geyser, point out some small features you would most likely miss, steer you toward active and spouting geysers, and answer any questions you may have. The walk lasts for 90 minutes.

There are other walks with Rangers at Canyon and Old Faithful; in addition walks are led from Canyon, Mammoth, Fishing Bridge/Lake Village, Madison/West Yellowstone, Grant Village/West Thumb and Norris. A detailed schedule is presented to you when entering Yellowstone National Park.

Learn More About the Old Faithful Inn
A great activity during a rainy day is a guided tour of Old Faithful Inn. Every day four tours (9:30 and 11 a.m., 2 and 3:30 p.m.) are led by specialists who know the ins and outs of the Inn. The tours meet next to the huge fireplace in the lobby.

On the Water
Bridge Bay Marina offers motorboat rentals ($47/hour), but Yellowstone Lake is awfully big, especially when you don't know what you're looking for. We'd recommend the one-hour scenicruise on the Lake Queen II, which leaves five times daily (9:15 and 10:45 a.m.; 1:15, 2:45 and 4:15 p.m.) from Bridge Bay Marina and goes out to Stevenson Island. The cost is very reasonable -- $14.25 for adults, $9 for kids -- and you'll see both the grandeur of the lake and some of the history of the area. Before or after head to West Thumb and take a look at the geyser basin, an underappreciated feature of the Park.