Yellowstone Friday (??)

Yes, we went to Yellowstone yesterday. When Michele and the kids were here we went on Monday instead of Wednesday. This is our last week here so we wanted to go one more time. We stopped in West Yellowstone and picked up a pizza. While we waited for our pizza to be done we decided to each have a salad. We finished those, picked up our pizza and headed into the park. We drove about 14 miles into the park and then turned north. Almost as soon as we turned there was a bison walking down the middle of the street. Todd was so disappointed when we took them and they didn't see any bison. He thinks they don't really exist. He'll probably think I "doctored" this photo.


After leaving the bison we traveled about ten miles further and there was a HUGE bull elk. Boy, did we hit the jackpot for animals today! It was so cool, just eating his grass on the side of the road. Every once in awhile he'd look up at us and then continue eating. Check out this guy's rack!




After leaving Mr. Elk we drove to our favorite spot for wildlife viewing, the Lamar Valley. We forgot our chairs so we just ate our pizza in the truck. We watched the huge herd of bison, finished up our pizza and decided to drive a little further down the road. We found a group of people with binoculars and scopes and asked what they were looking at. Turns out there's a female grizzly and her cub. One lady said, "they just went around that hill but I wouldn't go up there." Well, duh. I'm not going any closer. We'll just wait until they come out. They finally came out and WOW what a site. The mother was HUGE!! The baby was already a year old so didn't look so small himself. Every once in awhile they'd poke their heads out of the shrubs and look at us. What an awesome site. I couldn't take any pictures because they were too far away for my little camera. You'll just have to take my word for it.

We also found out from these same people there were two bison carcasses in the Slough Creek. Don't know what happened or why there were two of them but we headed that way because we figured where there were dead animals there would be LIVE animals eating them. YUK! By the time we got there it was too dark to see anything. When I looked through my binoculars I couldn't tell the large rocks in the creek from anything else that might be there. They were definitely there though because the park rangers had put up signs on the road saying, "Caution Congestion Ahead". That's because a lot of people had already heard about the carcasses.

We got home at about 11:00 after stopping for fuel. We weren't planning on staying so late this time but we couldn't resist watching the grizzlies until they were gone out of sight. We didn't see anymore animals on the way home but that's okay. We got to see so many today. What a GREAT last visit. I'm so glad that we got to spend so much time here in this area.

We're pulling out of here on Monday. We were really supposed to leave here yesterday but we extended our stay so we wouldn't be traveling on a Friday. It's much better to wait and travel on a Monday. We're not really sure yet where we're going except that it will be north. We'll probably end up around the Deer Lodge area in Montana or somewhere around there.