Even if you can’t stay overnight, be sure to visit the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone, perhaps the most beloved of all National Park historic accommodations: its soaring, 92-foot lobby, erected in 1904, is a marvelous thatch-work of gnarled and knotted tree trunks, evoking the sensation of being inside the primeval forest of Yellowstone.  Its architect Robert C. Reamer wanted to capture the wild, unruly essence of nature, arguing that the Inn should look as if it actually grew on the spot.  (“I built it in keeping with the place where it stands,” Reamer wrote.  “To try to improve upon it would be an impertinence.”)

Today, the Inn’s older rooms still have their original raw pinewood walls, marble sinks and claw-foot cast-iron baths; on cooler nights, the wind can sometimes whistle through old logs that make up the exterior walls.  In 1959, an earthquake caused some structural damage, and its famous gabled roof is now sadly off-limits to the public – except for two individuals who are permitted to accompany a staff member raising and lowing the flags every dawn and dusk.  (Not surprisingly, the ritual is hugely popular and booked up a year in advance, although it is worth asking at the reservation desk if someone has canceled).  Would-be roof-climbers should be aware that it’s not a trip for those leery of heights.  Starting from the lobby, one ascends a series of rickety old stairs that seem to be suspended in mid-air as they sway underfoot like trapeze ropes.  These pass by the precarious ‘Crow’s Nest’ – a tree-house for adults, where in the early 1900s a small musical ensemble would gather after dinner, to serenade the guests dancing below in formal dress.  But for those lucky few visitors who make the climb, the view from the roof across the steaming fumaroles of the Upper Geyser Basin is magical.

Thanks to HBO, no Western town is as well-known today as Deadwood in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  The series has brought a flood of history-lovers to the real town of Deadwood – an outpost that still has a wild edge, since every saloon and bar has been turned into a lively casino.  In the summer, motorbike enthusiasts cruise the streets like modern-day cowboys.  But was the original Deadwood quite as raunchy and violent at the show depicts?  As with so many dramatic recreations of the Old West, the answer is yes and no.

The basis of the series is absolutely true: In 1874, gold was discovered in the Lakota Indian Reserve, supposedly off-limits by treaty with the United States Congress, and white miners immediately made their way illegally into the area to found the rough-hewn town of Deadwood in its heart.

The first sheriff of Deadwood was indeed named Seth Bullock, as in the series, and there was a Gem Saloon run by a certain Al Swearingen, of whom little is known.  But perhaps the most famous real-life character was the gunslinger Wild Bill Hickock, who arrived in 1876 to try his luck in Deadwood with the notorious Calamity Jane; not long afterwards, a cowardly poker player named Jack McCall walked up behind him in the so-called Number Ten Saloon and shot him in the head.  Hickock usually sat with his back to the wall, but for reasons unknown changed his practice that day; his poker hand of aces and eights is still known as “the dead man’s hand.”  (Today, the event is recreated throughout the summer in Deadwood for enthusiastic tourists inside a saloon that has been rebuilt on the site; the original burned down).

While most other plot lines of the HBO series are fictional, the writer David Milch was trying to depict a broader historical truth about the Old West, where civilization was born from chaos.

See the remarkable Delicate Arch at Arches National Park in Moab, Utah.  The forces of nature have created over 2,000 natural sandstone arches, the greatest density of natural arches in the world.  While vacationing at Arches expect to see the colorful collared lizard basking in the sun.

For information about the history of Arches visit the National Park Service website.

Family films set in popular travel destinations are a fun way to build excitement about an upcoming vacation.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a movie is worth thousands of famous sights, historic buildings and dramatic landscapes.  Inspire your family to travel to US National Parks with these recommended films.
For 8-12 year olds we recommend:

• “Pocahontas”
• “Three Amigos”
• Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron”
• “National Lampoon’s Vacation”

For 13-17 year olds we recommend:

• “Raising Arizona”
• “A River Runs Through It”
• “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”

For additional family films visit the Globus Family Travel Fun Films List.

Before you explore the Wild, Wild West or Canyon Country on a family vacation, check out our list of recommended books.  We’ve found some favorite tales for kids and teens about U.S. National Parks and other family vacation destinations. The books will help your children understand the setting and culture of your upcoming travels—and also inspire them to visit.

For 8-12 year olds we recommend:

• “Expedition Yellowstone, A Mountain Adventure” by Sandra Chisholm Robinson
• “The Great Yellowstone Fire” by Carole G. Vogel and Kathryn A. Goldner
• “Brighty of the Grand Canyon” by Marguerite Henry

For 13-17 year olds we recommend:

• “The Great Yellowstone Fire” by Carole G. Vogel and Kathryn A. Goldner
• “Mount Rushmore: The Story Behind the Scenery” by Lincoln Borglum
• “Downriver” by Will Hobbs

For additional books visit the Globus Family Travel Recommended Reading List.

The four presidential faces, carved 60-feet high in the granite of Mount Rushmore, comprise one of America’s most revered images.  But many visitors cannot help thinking of Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest, where he and Eva Marie Saint clamber across the monolith pursued by Communist spies.  The shot was actually filmed in a Hollywood studio, but it convinced millions of people that they too could climb the patriotic monument.

This is not the case: Access to Mount Rushmore has been blocked by a high-security fence ever since the artist Gutzon Borglum died in 1941 and work on the giant sculpture ceased.  But according to his original plan, Borglum had intended that the public be able to reach his giant faces via a splendid stone staircase.  In the late 1930s, he even began work on a splendid vault buried within the rock for tourists to visit – called the Hall of Records, it was planned as a repository for the original Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.  Worried that future generations might find Mount Rushmore as enigmatic, Borglum also wanted a museum to store information on the four presidents – Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt – and an explanation of “how the memorial was built and frankly, why.”

The vault was never finished.  Today, it’s simply an ever-narrowing passage that stretches about 80 feet into the rock, and one can run one’s fingers over granite walls still honeycombed with drill marks.  Still, Borglum’s wish would be partly fulfilled.  In 1998, the Park Service inscribed 16 porcelain panels with historical data about Mount Rushmore, secured them in a titanium-lined casket, then buried them in the incomplete Hall of Records – the last work ever expected to be done on the site.

Watch for wildlife, as elk, moose, mule deer, and bison are commonly seen by visitors throughout the country’s many national parks including Yellowstone National Park.

The Rockefeller family’s association with Jackson Hole has continued to the present day.  In September, 2007, their private holiday home, the JY Ranch, covering 3,000 acres of the finest terrain within the valley, was donated to the United States government as a new addition to the Grand Teton National Park; today it is open to the public for the first time in over six decades.

The transition began in 2001, when the 90-year-old Laurance S. Rockefeller – John D. Jr’s son, who had honeymooned at the ranch in 1934 – announced that it would become the “LSR Preserve,” and include a state-of-the-art Visitors Center crafted from recycled native woods.

Hikers can now take a four-mile loop trail to the crystalline Phelps Lake, passing through spectacular mountain landscape that has not changed since the Shoshone Indians roamed here over a century ago.  What visitors won’t spy are the 30 log buildings that once made up the JY: Before the Rockefellers bought it in 1932, it had operated as Wyoming’s first dude ranch, but as part of the 2007 donation, all man-made structures were carefully removed along with seven miles of asphalt roads and 1,500 tons of building materials, to return the lake to its pristine state.

Even so, it is easy to imagine the JY in its heyday, when a string of rough-hewn cabins with wooden furniture and stone fireplaces stood above the alpine lakeside.  To this idyllic frontier outpost, Rockefeller family members would arrive from the East every summer to indulge in hiking, swimming, fishing, hunting and horseback-riding – outdoor pursuits not so very different from those enjoyed by the Shoshone in warmer months.

The sheer magnitude of the Grand Canyon is the most overwhelming sensation you’ll receive from your visit. Billions of years of erosion have created a geological history lesson told through the multifarious layers of rock. Sunsets here set the canyon walls aflame with a crimson hue that will stay forever burned in your memory.

Today, the raft journey through the Grand Canyon is one of the West’s great  white-water thrills.  But it’s hard to imagine just how daunting the trip must have been in 1869, when John Wesley Powell decided to attempt it.  Back then, the canyon was utterly unexplored – it existed on maps as a blank spot in the desert southwest.

Powell was a geology professor from Illinois who had lost his right arm as an officer during the Civil War.  Despite this handicap, he got together nine men, mostly from his own friends and relatives, and transported four wooden boats to Green River in Wyoming, the start of the navigable route.  Waving goodbye to a few well-wishers by the riverbank, they set off to face 1,000 miles by river through Utah and Arizona.

As Powell himself put it: “What (water)falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.”

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