Then on March 20 we learned that the popular guidebook has been recognized as a finalist in the 20th annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, too! The Foreword Reviews editorial team selected their finalists from more than 2,000 individual titles spread across 65 genres. The complete list of finalists for the Foreword INDIES awards can be found at: https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/finalists/2017/. Winners are now being decided by a panel of judges across the country, reflecting Foreword’s readership of booksellers and librarians.

We’re glad the new cover, 65 new color photos, and updates to the geyser and wildlife viewing information have captured both IBPA’s and Foreword’s attention again this year.

Stay tuned. Winners of the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards will be announced during Publishing University in Austin, Texas, on April 6, 2018; the Foreword INDIES winners will be announced on June 15, 2018.

Read the full news release in the media kit or learn about our books’ previous awards.

—Editor and publisher, Beth Chapple

Amazing book to review before your visit, but also to keep with you during it! Upon entering the park we were given a map, but this book has so many more detailed maps of each area that were SO helpful! I was responsible for planning a day and a half worth of activities for my group, and this book helped me to not disappoint! It explains EVERY single feature of the park, split up according to region. Seriously, check this book out and your friend will think you know it all. Can’t wait to go back to the park–according to the book, I missed out on A LOT.

—L, Amazon.com 5-star review, June 22, 2016

The price of the Yellowstone Treasures e-book in three different formats normally varies between $12.99 and the list price of $19.99. People all around the world can now easily buy it, as we discussed in an April post, “E-books for international readers.”.

Now, for just this calendar month, July 2016, Amazon.com is offering the Kindle version of the guidebook for $3.99! That’s a bargain for the Updated Fourth Edition, which boasts more facts, anecdotes, history, and travel tips than ever before. To get selected for this deal, a book must have high customer ratings on Amazon.com (3.2 stars or better), and with 69 reviews, the updated fourth edition currently has a rating of 4.7 stars. Something to consider giving to someone you know who has a Kindle or the free Kindle app on the iPad?

—Editor and Publisher, Beth

Thank you for sending me the book [Through Early Yellowstone], which I truly love.

I wish this had been available when I first entered Yellowstone, as viewing the park’s wonders through the eyes of early travelers highlights their extraordinary nature and variety, and the difficulties early travelers faced. I enjoyed the many details of a developing tourist trade—tent hotels, trails and roads that suddenly stopped, rare interactions with wild animals, the mother who set out for a park summer with her lively children and left her money at home—the list goes on and on. I frequently turned anew to the thirty or so paintings, never before reproduced. The book is filled with treasures, insights, humor, pictures, and descriptions of our first and still most unusual and startling national park.

One of the uses for this early version of the book is the American Booksellers Association Advance Access program. When you go into your local independent bookstore, have you ever noticed a monthly flyer with the Indie Next List? If you haven’t, pick it up some time. Each book is given a short but pithy and passionate review by one of the staff members at an independent bookstore. I am making eleven of these advance reader copies available to booksellers to peruse, read, consider for their stores, and we hope recommend for the Indie Next list.

We will definitely keep you posted on this site’s Reviews page when we do get a quotable comment.

—Editor Beth Chapple

Reenactment of John Muir and President Teddy Roosevelt’s camping trip in Yosemite Valley to discuss the future of a National Park system.

The songs to go with the wonderful colors and aerial views range from “Hallelujah” from the Shrek soundtrack to James Bay’s 2014 folk rock hit “Hold Back the River,” with, of course, “This Land is Your Land” as well. We also hear bird song, coyote howls, bear grunts, and running water.

According to ABC News, the filming lasted nine months and cost 12.5 million dollars. The narrator is Robert Redford. You can learn more at the film’s website.

But the movie is not only a compendium of beautiful sounds and images. There is a plot and plenty to admire as three adventure travelers climb and paddle in various parks. And the movie informs us about John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt, reenacting their historic three-day camping trip in the Yosemite Valley wilderness. It’s a fitting way to celebrate President’s Day weekend and this year’s centennial of establishing the National Park Service. I recommend you go and bring friends and family!

—Beth, Editor and Publisher

Photo credit: Courtesy of MacGillivray Freeman Films. Photographer: Barbara MacGillivray ©VisitTheUSA.com

You can easily guess what lodge I will vote for—the one I like to consider my second home, Old Faithful Inn.

Another correlation that interested me was to see whether the poll included all the sixteen lodges in Christine Barnes’s beautiful 2002 book, Great Lodges of the National Parks. Answer: No. A good many of those in the book are not in the poll, but the poll offers ten others not in the book. Those in both lists are the Old Faithful Inn, the Ahwahnee, Crater Lake Lodge, El Tovar, Bryce Canyon Lodge, Grand Canyon Lodge, Glacier Park Lodge, Many Glacier Hotel, Paradise Inn, and Yellowstone’s Lake Hotel. Ms. Barnes includes other great lodges in her second volume, published in 2012.

Just for fun, I took a personal poll of the ones I’ve stayed in so far. I came up with seven besides Old Faithful Inn. Coming in a close second to OFI would be Death Valley National Park’s Furnace Creek Inn.

The Inn sits above an amazing oasis, a terraced garden with palm trees, a small cold stream, and a little pool with water, all from a spring in the hillside. It has a gorgeous, big swimming pool, and its excellent dining room and comfortable rooms are where I would rather relax than in any place else in all the months when much of Yellowstone is closed, especially March and April.

The others I’ve enjoyed are Jackson Lake and Jenny Lake Lodges in the Tetons, El Tovar in Grand Canyon National Park, the Ahwahnee in Yosemite (although this one needs a second visit from me, because it was not fully open when I was there), Wuksachi Lodge in Sequoia National Park, and what the concessionaire now calls Lake Yellowstone Hotel. I can’t happily accept that name, because its historic name is Lake Hotel (and the lake’s name is Yellowstone Lake, not Lake Yellowstone). My unsubstantiated theory is that some PR person a few years back decided lengthening the name and reversing its words had more cachet.

One other way I enjoy the lodges in the Great Lodges book is to extend my wish list. When I last visited the Grand Canyon I was too late to reserve a room in the Grand Canyon Lodge. But I was too early (before its opening on May 15th) to see the North Rim and its lodge, which isn’t on these lists. Other times I was also too late when I tried to reserve at Crater Lake Lodge and the Lodge at Bryce Canyon. In Glacier Park I’d love to stay at either Glacier Park Lodge or Many Glacier Hotel, and if I visit Mt. Rainier I’d stay in the Paradise Inn.

Place your own vote by March 30th at this USA Today website.

Photos are by Jens Paape (Old Faithful Inn, page 75 of Yellowstone Treasures) and the author.

Now it’s 2014, and even in Yellowstone this past summer, I could barely find the Big Dipper. Was it that our entire atmosphere is polluted, or was there now too much ambient light even at Old Faithful and Mammoth Villages to enjoy the stars?

Listening to a National Public Radio broadcast the other day, I became absorbed in the story of what has happened to the night skies in America in the past few decades. NPR was interviewing author Paul Bogard about his book The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. Use “Look Inside” for Chapter 9 on the Amazon website for light pollution images, a sample of what’s in the book.

I’m going to have to read this book, since I fully agree with the reviewer Bill McKibben, who wrote on Amazon: “The most precious things in the modern world are probably silence, solitude, and darkness–and of these three rarities, true darkness may be the rarest of all. Many thanks to Paul Bogard for searching out the dark spots and reminding us to celebrate them!”

Take a look at our nugget that includes what the author of a classic Western novel wrote about
experiencing the night.

We just returned from a Winter in Yellowstone trip and this was a great resource to keep handy as we traveled around the park. It would be even more invaluable during the spring to fall seasons when all the trails are open. Gives interesting and fun historical and anecdotal tidbits as well as kilometer by kilometer info on what you will see on each trail or road. Our tour guide even asked to borrow it at one point! You won’t miss anything when you follow this guide.

Tour guide Orville Bach with editor Beth Chapple, July 2013

You can find more comments people send in at From Our Readers. Or send us a comment yourself on our Contact page.

–editor Beth Chapple

“[A] magnificent catalogued resource to the full enjoyment of a huge national park and area known as Yellowstone. The author has extensive knowledge and experience in exploring the beauties of the area. . . . Altogether, Yellowstone Treasures fills an ongoing need for new generations of park explorers and appreciators. She has spent much of her life becoming better acquainted with the riches of the area and she is generously sharing her knowledge with this beautiful guidebook. It is not to be missed.”

—Nancy Lorraine, Midwest Book Review, May 2009

As we explained in our November 4 press release, the updated fourth edition boasts:

• Color tabs to indicate the six sections of the park
• A dozen new pictures
• Fully revised maps that show recent road changes
• Updated geological information to reflect current research on what’s under Yellowstone and how it works, along with new diagrams like the one excerpted below
• A new glossary of geological and other scientific terms

Part of Figure 5. What’s under Yellowstone: Moving plates, mantle plumes, and the Yellowstone hot spot.

To encourage sales during the time of the year when not so many people visit Yellowstone, we started a holiday sale in November. You can buy the guidebook for $19.96 plus shipping and handling, which is 20% off the list price. To get the 20% discount on the print book, be sure to type the promo code “Holidays” in the Voucher box of the shopping cart. But hurry, this coupon only lasts until midnight on January 20, 2014.

Best wishes,
Beth Chapple, Editor

Recently I decided to go through the ideas of one reviewer carefully for constructive suggestions—and I found one! More about what I learned and about what I can’t resist disagreeing with will appear soon in a new nugget of information on our website. [See The Features of Yellowstone Treasures.]

One thing the reviewer certainly got right: the book certainly reflects the author’s interests—and what book does not? I check out as many places in Yellowstone as I can every year, but I confess that I spend the most time where I most like to be.

I thank the reviewer for saying he “got a sort of ‘wikipedia’ to Yellowstone” instead of what he was expecting. That’s a compliment!