Photos from nearly a century ago show visitors peeking their heads into geysers. This summer, more examples have been captured on social media or posted to YouTube, fitting into a larger pattern of rule-breaking tourists emerging from the pandemic. A few months ago, a woman garnered national attention after dipping her foot and fingers into a scalding Yellowstone hot spring as well....
September 8, 2023
Random "garner" sighting of the day.
I'm reading "No, bad tourist, you can’t touch the hot springs at Yellowstone/Omnipresent warnings and scalding temperatures do not stop park visitors from testing the waters" (WaPo):
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The Trick to Yellowstone.. is the same trick to ALL National Parks;
Get (at least) a quarter of mile from a paved road.
The stupid people (well.. MOST of the stupid people) won't leave the parking lots
"A few months ago, a woman garnered national attention after dipping her foot and fingers into a scalding Yellowstone hot spring as well...."
She likely garnered 2nd and 3rd degree burns.
Sometimes stupid hurts. It ought to hurt more often.
"A few months ago, a woman garnered national attention after dipping her foot and fingers into a scalding Yellowstone hot spring"
I missed it not that it would have gotten my attention. I garner she doesn't know how to boil water either, because that life lesson might have prevented her from gaining the other life lesson.
At this point I'm all in favor of just removing all the warning signs everywhere. There are way too many stupid people in this country and we need to thin the herd.
Was she wearing shorts? Oh wait, shorts on women are okay. Here in NW Montana, I've never seen real cowboys (my son-in-law is one and so are his friends) wear anything but long pants to work. Go swimming in the reservoir? They wear swim trunks. But never shorts. Or flip-flops.
Yellowstone hot springs, geysers, bears, and bison make up a big outdoor IQ test. Some people fail.
Natural selection in action. What's the fuss about at the NYT? Oh, wait! It must be mostly Progressives sticking their faces in geysers!
Some problems are entirely self correcting.
Natural thermal springs that are not too hot, in a national park: Hot Springs, AR
Growing up in Arkansas we had occasion to visit there many times. Used to be a hot creek that ran right through downtown -- old and young would dangle their feet in it every day. But most of it's been covered up with concrete now :-( ... still flows underneath.
"...........had to be held down by big police"
They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us,
As Fire would certainly burn
But the Gods of the Copybook Headings never warned us that in some places the water would do both.
Is the problem that too many people, having graduated from American public schools, are unable to read the signs?
If this has been going on "for nearly a century" it isn't news.
"A few months ago, a woman garnered national attention after dipping her foot and fingers into a scalding Yellowstone hot spring as well...."
A few years back I accidently tried to take a cake out of the oven without a potholder, but it didn't make the papers.
Who doesn't know that these hot springs at Yellowstone are dangerous? Every summer some dope scalds themselves and it make the national news wire. Do these people live under rocks?
@gilbar: I've seen some of the tourists who venture from the parking lot to "experience" a national park - you wish they hadn't. Many of the parks, especially in the West, can have weather systems move through unpredictably, and when a busload of tourists suddenly find themselves in the middle of a hailstorm with winds and dirt whipping around them from every direction, it's pandemonium. They're trying to run back to their cars or the buses, tripping over their flip flops, falling down and injuring themselves. I'm no fan of the park rangers but the morons they have to deal with do make their surliness more understandable.
Follow-on from my comment at 1:52.
Or is the problem that the federal and state governments (and the press) have conditioned the public not to believe official notices?
@KellyM, no, of course they don’t live under rocks. They live on urban and suburban environments where wildlife consists of squirrels and chipmunks, and the closest they get to “nature red in fang and claw” is a peregrine taking a pigeon or a trip to the zoo.
Big Mike said...
Is the problem that too many people, having graduated from American public schools, are unable to read the signs?
No! The problem is that too many people, having graduated from American's finer universities and colleges, are sure that those rules don't apply to them.
I know that Althouse considers all uses of "garner" to be bad, but isn't this case egregiously bad? I assume garnering to require some intent on the part of the garner-er. I assume the vast majority of idiots who make the news doing stupid things in National Parks aren't trying to get publicity. Although with the rise of social media....
My wife and I once were lucky enough to arrive at Steamboat geyser minutes before it erupted. It doesn't erupt regularly, but it can go for days. The mist raining down on us, safely on the tourist boardwalk, was hot dilute sulfuric acid. What a memory that was for us and all the other tourists there that morning. And nobody climbed over the railing, nobody was injured through their own stupidity, nobody died from the very available "natural causes" just meters away.
We went to the recommended hot springs in the stream at the Mammoth Hot Springs exit to the park to dip into a creek fed by much less vigorous hot springs. Along with a lot of other people. Again, no misbehavior, no injuries, no deaths. Almost like the vast, vast majority of people aren't dumber than rubber mallets.
There was a woman who got close to a buffalo and nothing happened to her… At least on video.
Well the tourons (tourist/moron) keep petting the fluffy cows no matter how many signs and warnings are issued and no matter how many videos of them getting tossed like rag dolls get posted on the web. Some people are just stupid and should be allowed to garner their Darwin Award already.
There is one, small geyser in the same basin as "Old Faithful" that not only can you peer into it, you can do so as it erupts. And with the encouragement of the Park's Rangers. I did this in the summer of 1979 while on a cross-country bicycle tour. What was most surprising was the water was fairly cool in temperature.
There was a saying in chemistry class: hot glass looks the same as cool glass.
As they say in Thailand, "No bad tourist, just bad joss." Mai me ben ha! Bankok have, Patya mai me!
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