Motor vehicles may be used on roads only. Visitors may encounter snow and hazardous driving conditions during spring and fall, with temporary road closures. Nearly all the famous sights in Yellowstone are within a couple hundred feet of the Grand Loop Road, a 140-mile figure 8 through the middle of the park. One of the main routes to Old Faithful is from the south via Jackson, Wyo., and the South Entrance. The park road crosses the Continental Divide three times.
Waters flow east of the divide to the Atlantic, or west to the Pacific.
Sampling the world's largest concentration of geysers, you follow the beautiful Firehole and Gibbon rivers. A visitor center at Old Faithful and museums at Norris tell aspects of the park's stories. In Black Sand Basin, the bright colors of Sunset Lake and Emerald Pool attract photographers. At Biscuit Basin, mineral deposits took on biscuit shapes before a 1959 earthquake triggered changes destroying the biscuits. At Midway Geyser Basin you may walk to Excelsior Geyser Crater and Grand Prismatic Spring.