'I saw people trying to take selfies with a bear': 15+ Tourists who were wildly unprepared for the national parks they were visiting

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jan 1, 2024 11:00 AM EST

You may be smarter than a bear, but there's no way you're stronger or faster! And if you think you could take on a charging bear, then the bear is also smarter than you. 

The USA is full of gorgeous national parks. No two are alike, and they vary greatly from state to state. Some are great for hiking and exploring mountains, while others, like Yellowstone, have hot springs and natural beauty that draw in lots of admirers. 

You'd think visitors would want to read up on park information, or check out some nature documentaries, or just skim a few websites. Then they'd know the right clothes and food to pack, and they would know not to march right up to wild animals and take selfies with them. Despite putting signs all over the parks that tell tourists to stay away from bison, moose, bears, and other wild critters, some people can't help themselves. They just think, "Aww, how cute!" That wild animal is cute… and it's not trained. That brown bear is not going to act all lovey-dovey like you saw in a random video online. It's going to think you're a chew toy! 

Maybe this is common sense to you, or maybe, like these tourists, you're under the impression that wild animals won't hurt you if you're super extra nice to them. If you're in that second category, read on! You're about to learn today. 

Next up, take a different trip into nature with this story of a farmer and his new city-folk neighbors. 

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 9858265344
    via Kedar Gadge on Unsplash
  • 02
    Park rangers of reddit, what is the stupidest thing you have ever seen a tourist do inside a national park?
    via u/[deleted]
  • 03
    king_bestestes So this is my favourite tourist story and I hope I'm not too late to tell it. I was in a national park at the visitor's center. Suddenly, there's this huge commotion and a lot of screaming from the lobby. I head over to find an entire tourist family crying and screaming and the park staff trying their best to manage the situation. Then the air shifts and it hits me.
    via u/king_bestestes
  • 04
    They had applied a liberal amount of BEAR SPRAY all over themselves and the entire lobby. Apparently, they had mistaken the wording of "bear repellent" and had assumed it was to be used like mosquito repellent.
    via u/king_bestestes
  • 05
    ColorMeStunned I once had a lady get really mad at me because "The trees here look just like the ones in my backyard!" That's...not my fault.
    via u/ColorMeStunned
  • 06
    gcviking Not a ranger, but I was a firefighter on a national forest. I saw people trying to take selfies with a bear.
    via u/gcviking
  • 07
    Choniepaster I was a back country trail worker for several years in Kings Canyon/Sequoia National Park. We usually had our tents set up a couple miles from a back country ranger station and we'd hang out with them on the weekends. Most of the people I saw/dealt with were not day hikers, they would usually be planning on being out in the wilderness for a week or more. I still can't really believe the insanely stupid people would do out there, we were constantly
    via u/Choniepaster
  • 08
    having to get on the radio to report people to the closest back country ranger. I have a ton of examples, but I'll just list a couple. 1. Ran into a group of about 4 people who were trying to hike to Mt. Whitney and back in two- three days (around 70-80 miles round trip from where they started) and they only brought cliff bars and a space blanket. They ended up getting chased down by the nearby ranger and
    via u/Choniepaster
  • 09
    escorted out of the back country. 2. A group of boy scouts decided they wanted to try to build a raft and started sawing away at young trees. That is suuuuuuper illegal. I think after they were caught they got fined something like $3000 per tree, I can't remember exactly.
    via u/Choniepaster
  • 10
    Caught a couple of douchey "bros" trying to feed toothpaste to a bear by hand. I was too confused to be 1, just told them to cut it out.
    via u/Choniepaster
  • 11
    [deleted] Not a park ranger, but in Shark Valley at the Everglades National Park, every now and then some idiots will try to steal baby gators. This is utterly stupid, not only for the fact that they grow up to be full size gators, but because when the little gators feel threatened, they cry, which attracts all the adult mama gators in the area. Which ends up being a huge problem since its literally in the middle of the Everglades and swarming with gators.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 12
    bobfootm Not a ranger, but even as a seven year old I figured it must be a bad idea for my mother to feed chocolate chip cookies to the bears, by hand.
    via u/bobfootm
  • 13
    theartfulcodger Not a ranger, but.... One fine spring day several years ago, I was waiting for friends in the lounge of the Banff Springs Hotel, using my binocs to watch a black bear sow and her new cub, who had just walked out of the treeline and were tentatively exploring the far edge of the meadow, about 200 yds away. Overheard an American couple with Georgia-ish accents trying to get their kids to hurry up and get their coats on, because they wanted to
    via u/theartfulcodger
  • 14
    run out and take pics of them with the "cute little bear" before it and mama disappeared back into the conifers. It took a lot of sharp talk for me to get across to them that this was an extremely ill- advised idea, that these bears were completely wild creatures, and that approaching a nervous sow with a tiny and vulnerable spring cub was basically inviting her to put you in hospital for a week or two, and perhaps even to kill your child if you stupidly ordered them to approach the cub.
    via u/theartfulcodger
  • 15
    Innocents that they were, they didn't really believe that such a high-end hotel would permit dangerous animals to trespass on their property, or that it hadn't just set out a menagerie of docile Rocky Mountain mega-fauna to wander the grounds for their guests' amusement, like some gigantic petting zoo; in fact, they actually got quite huffy about it and began to argue, until I waylaid a passing concierge to help explain the facts of Canadian park life to them.
    via u/theartfulcodger
  • 16
    They obviously felt we both were deliberately being gigantic Canuck buzzkills who were out to spoil their day, because they walked away without even saying thank you.
    via u/theartfulcodger
  • 17
    krystyin Earlier this week I was on a geological fossil tour with Ranger Ron at the Grand Caynon National Park. The talk started at the Bright Angel Trail is a hiking trail located at the top of the caynon 4380 ft above the colorodo river and has hundreds of people walking or riding on mule to the camp below. Now this is not leasure hike, often you have only a few feet of path between you and pending death and 100% of the people on this trail are either on their
    via u/krystyin
  • 18
    way up or on their way down from the day before as it is impossible to make it up and back in the same day. Anyways, a testosterone filled hooligan felt like he would see how strong he was at the top of the trail. He picked up a rock the size of his head and dropped it on the hundreds of hikers and mule riders below. You you see every hiker see there impending death as this rock bounced of the canyon wall. Eventually about 1000'
    via u/krystyin
  • 19
    below it landed 2' from a hiker who likely is thanking the gods right now. Ranger Ron saw this and started yelling at this person like it he was the voice of God from a couple hundred feet away- needless to say this coward did not stay around to find out what would Ranger Ron caught up to him on the Canyon Rim. I have never seen a ranger that angry in my entire life and hope to never see something like that again.
    via u/krystyin
  • 20
    [deleted] Oooooh boy haha this is great. I worked at a park where it has big animals....dangerous and deadly animals. Had some stupid kid have his back turned taking a selfie with two adult male caribou...very large ones....literally 10 feet from him. They could have charged and he wouldn't have seen them coming. Had to go over to him and the idiot women next to him and tell them to get the away before something bad happens. Then
    via u/[deleted]
  • 21
    with the SAME caribou (mind you they were walking to the river as they always do), there was a somewhat medium sized crowd keeping a good distance away, and this one lady for WHATEVER reason decided it was a good time to walk this small trail that the caribou were walking, and she walked RIGHT between them. I think she could have reached out and petted them she was that close. The people next to me were like, "Omg What is she doing?!!"
    via u/[deleted]
  • 22
    I've seen a horde of fricken cameramen paparazzi following a grizzly bear. All he needed to be was hungry and irritated and he could have easily killed a handful of them. They kept a distance but not good enough, especially for a grizzly. But photographers NEVER listen to us and always do whatever the F they want. Other than the typical idiotic tourists being too close to moose and getting irritated when we tell them to because it's stressing them out when they surround them, I had this one asia
    via u/[deleted]
  • 23
    pictures of a rather large female moose from across the road. The moose was obviously very agitated and stressed as her hair was up, she was kind of snorting and she was stomping the ground. I stopped in between them and told the guy, "Hey, you need to move away. She's stressed out and she's going to charge you." "Oh okay". still sits there "Hey, I said you need to BACK UP." "OH yea ok ok". (kind of starts backing up). I drove away and looked in my mirror and saw the idiot going back to where he
    via u/[deleted]
  • 24
    I hope she did. The guy would have had nowhere to go and knowing most of the tourists, he would have thought to play dead which would only get him f'd up more. No sympathy for them. Now talking about different parks. This happens more than it since people seem to NOT have common sense. Day-to-day operations at this one park means that the road is going to be closed one way until the other side is clear, and sometimes traffic gets backed up (nothing we can do about it). You get people
    via u/[deleted]
  • 25
    driving from the back, all the way up to the front, in the wrong lane to see what is going on or because they thought someone was just taking pictures. No, a very large bus or RV is going to be barreling down the road towards you in a matter of seconds, that's all. Sooo, you might want to try to find a way to turn around or pull over.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 26
    CityParkRanger Actually a ranger, but in city parks.Dumbest thing in a national park was probably watching someone try to pet a bison in Yellowstone. Would have been fun to watch that person get trampled, but it didn't happen. Worst thing in a city park was person using a bbq in the middle of a dry grass field and almost starting a wildfire. (maybe not the stupiedest, but I don't want to really dwell on the things I've seen).
    via u/CityParkRanger
  • 27
    [deleted] During a whale watch on a boat in a marine sanctuary I had a guy ask me what the elevation was. Then I had a woman ask me how we get the whales in the lake, she thought it was a lake cause when she drove around the island the water was always on the right side. So many more. People get stupid on vacation.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 28
    thed0000d Not a ranger, but when my family was in Yellowstone walking along one of those boardwalks that follow a bunch of geysers and hot pools and etc, we encountered another family from the south (judging from their accents, at least), who thought that the signs that said "Warning:
    via u/thed0000d
  • 29
    extreme danger, do not exit boardwalk" didn't apply to them. So, right next to one of those signs, they hopped the fence to stare down into an active geyser. Unfortunately for all of us watching, they pulled back before it went off, but not without the wife informing everyone withing earshot, "Oh, the steam is warm!"
    via u/thed0000d
  • 30
    PyrrhuraMolinae Not a park ranger, but I was in South Africa at the Cape of Good Hope. Now, if you've ever been there, you know that the baboons are seriously dangerous. You do not with the baboons. There are signs all over the place, do not feed the baboons, do not approach the baboons, do not carry any sort of food anywhere on your person because the baboons will maul you, all that.
    via u/PyrrhuraMolinae
  • 31
    And they are not kidding; both myself and my mother were ambushed by baboons hoping we had food in our bags (we didn't). And then we came around a corner of the path and found a group of tourists sitting with a baboon (it had sat down on one of the low stone walls lining the paths) and taking photos with it. Like, sitting right beside this animal, like
    via u/PyrrhuraMolinae
  • 32
    you'd sit for a celebrity photo- op, so their friends could get pictures. One of the guys even tried to put his arm around it, and they all laughed when the baboon smacked his hand away. I don't think any of them had any concept of just what kind of damage a primate of that size can do to a man.
    via u/PyrrhuraMolinae
  • 33
    ✪ [deleted] Not a ranger, but a park volunteer. Just this past weekend a mountain goat was on the hiking trail near the top of the mountain. Now, if you don't know, mountain goats are pretty territorial. This thing is buckin' its head around and grunting like no ones business. Little kids kept trying to get close, adults too.
    via u/ [deleted]
  • 34
    All trying to pet it and get pictures. I had to physically hold people back from getting to close. After the thing ran up the mountain, people were literally standing under it when it kicked rocks down on their heads.
    via u/ [deleted]
  • 35
    yodamy Not a ranger, but we had just finished setting up our campsite when a man showed up to the one next to ours to setup his camp while he waited for the rest of his family to get there. He got out of his truck with a bag of McDonald's and sat down on a rock and ate his meal, it consisted of a 2-cheeseburger meal, fries and a coke. How do I know exactly what he was eating without staring at him
    via u/yodamy
  • 36
    the whole time? Because when he was done he threw all of the trash into the woods behind him. Greasy cheeseburger wrappers and all. My dad explained to him there are bears in woods and that that kind of thing is an invite for them to come into the campground. Guy laughed, said it was fine. Dad threatened him and made him go pick it all up.
    via u/yodamy
  • 37
    the_recreater I don't work at a national park, I do work at a county park though. The stupidest thing I've ever seen was a guy scaling a 10 ft. fence, to get something on the other side. Now the climbing itself wasn't too stupid, but when he got to the top he decided he didn't need to climb down, he'd jump! So, he leaps down...and up his ankle. I watched him panic for a minute; he thinks he's totally alone and doesn't know how the he'll get out. But then he saw me walking towards him.
    via u/the_recreater
  • 38
    It's an athletic field with a fence the entire way around. If I hadn't been there to open the gate, he would have been stuck for a while. He certainly wasn't climbing the fence again.
    via u/the_recreater
  • 39
    swanyMcswan Not a Ranger but... The stupid person was me. I love camping and lived in Nebraska at the time and camped there all year around. Me and my fiance planned a trip up to the mountains in Colorado to do a hiking trip.
    via u/swanyMcswan
  • 40
    We'll me thinking I was some sort of expert went there without taking topo maps or really learning the trail map. So we got lost (on a trail but not the one we wanted) and our 2 day trip turned to 3 and our 12 mile round trip hike turned into 40. On the last day we tespassed across a ranch to a road I recognized on our way in and hitch hiked the last 5 miles back to our car. Luckily we had brought plenty of supplies and we were never truly truly lost but still I was an idiot
    via u/swanyMcswan

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