Yellowstone Visitors Actually Drank Hot Spring Water?

Ever wonder if some people think Yellowstone’s thermal pools are just oversized Stanley cups filled by Mother Nature? Turns out, yes. In a bizarre twist I didn't have on my BINGO card, a few tourists have been nabbed bending down to drink from these bubbling hot tubs of arsenic soup inhabited by brain-eating microbes. Not hydration, that is a straight ticket to death.

And this is not a single “oops”… rangers don't have the ability to actively stop people from stepping off the boardwalks to be closer to the pools. Others are out for the ultimate snap (Instagram, yo). Hats fly everywhere. And then, of course, you have the queen and king of bad choices, tourons, who look at a boiling pool of volcanic water and think, “Mmmm, that sounds yummy.”

A man who was feeling the steam-barista vibe opened his trap and sucked on a spring like he was getting an oat milk latte. One man found the hike so easy he might as well have been wearing flip-flops to tromp across fragile bacterial mats by Grand Prismatic Spring.

The point is that these pools are not only hot, but also deadly. Temperatures can turn your skin to butter in no time. Minerals kill you slow, and the bacteria? No matter how many immunity boosters you take, they don't give a damn.

It’s these same people who end up cruising through Montana a few miles down the road, trying to dodge bison or chugging bong water on their way to Glacier Park.