Yellowstone

Let me start out with some stuff from last week. Three things...

1. This is the little Black Bear in the tree that I mentioned last time. This was about 20ft from the house.

2. I discovered that I'm now famous in Japan! I got an email from the Japanese photographer the I met on St Paul Island. He is putting together some web pages about his experience on the trip and one of them includes a photo of me! Here's the link: http://www.talktalk.jp/Nakajima141188524415.html. If anyone out there can read Japanese, please let me know if he says anything bad about me. He also said he let his friends know about my blog so they could see some of the birds he missed. I'm sure the Japanese fan mail will come flooding in soon.

3. I wanted to mention a couple I met in Glacier. Mark and Jennifer Metternich. A nice Christian couple and he's just starting out in a career as a fine art landscape photographer http://www.markmetternich.smugmug.com/. He does great work. They plan to open a gallery in Las Vegas very soon. It's a huge step. Pray for them if you think of it.

Back to Yellowstone.

The weather in the park ranged from sunny and about 60 to snowy and about 26. It seemed like you could get all that in one 24hr period. It made things interesting in both the good and bad sense of the word. I got photos of many of the landscapes and animals in a variety of weather but the rain and snow made it awfully uncomfortable.

I believe the first thing that people think of when they here "Yellowstone" is geysers. I got some shots of geysers and hot springs... but there are hundreds of these things in the park, and to tell you the truth, they all started to look the same to me after a while. After shooting a few of them I decided to concentrate on other things like wildlife and other landscapes. I met one retired couple who have been spending many weeks in the park every year for the last 30 years! It sounded like they spent most of there time just watching geysers. Good for them but it's not for me.

It's easy to see how you could spend a lot of time in the park. I plan to return there after I'm done here in Cody. Aside from the geysers they have Elk, Bison, Bears, Wolves, Coyotes... Most of which you can see from the road. The roads also bring you right up to some outstanding waterfalls, canyons and a lot of other beautiful scenery. That made it easy for me and for the rest of the crowd in the park. I would hate to see this place in peak season.

When I stopped at the visitor center I heard one guy ask how to get to Old Faithful. He said all he wanted to do there was see Old Faithful. To each their own. Anyway this is what the scene looks like while folks are waiting for it to go off.

Here it is going off. That guy form the visitor center can go home now.

I found some of the hot springs much more interesting than the geysers. Also, the shorter days we're in now make it easier for me to get up for late evening and early morning shots.

Here's Tower Falls. This was a far as I could go on this road. The rest of it was closed off due to snow. Other roads in the park closed off now and then as well. I wouldn't want to get here much later than this or all the roads would be closed.

I'm afraid I forgot the name of this one. I'll have to look it up.

Here's the lower Yellowstone Falls.

Here's Yellowstone Canyon without snow.

The fall grasses are quite pretty without snow as well.

With the snow the place looks quite different. This is Yellowstone Canyon again.

Here's a collection of snow scenes from the Lamar Valley area.

With the snow, Some areas got a lot of fog. This was near Mammoth.

The Elk around Mammoth have almost no fear of people. The night I camped there I discovered they also like to hang out in the campground and bugle all night! Sometimes right next to my camper. I never thought I would get tired of hearing Elk bugling, but I did that night.

This is one of the regulars at Mammoth. The tag on his left ear says "6". He got the tag when two years ago rangers had to tranquilize him and cut his antlers off. That's what they do to them when they ram cars. This guy did it two years in a row. It looks like he'll get to keep his antlers this year.

Bison are also very common in the park. They don't care if they hold up traffic or not.

Here's a nice herd without snow.

Here's one in the snow.

It's tricky photographing dark bison in bright snow, but I found this mistake kind of interesting.

Here's a Grizzly in the snow. I didn't see many of them.

Pronghorn Antelope were pretty common in some areas.

And of course I need to include a sheep photo. This Bighorn was near Tower Falls

Coyotes are common here too and they're a lot easier to see in the snow.

Wolves would be hard to find if it weren't for the fact that there are a few dedicated volunteers that are dedicated to keeping track of them. They tell me that one guy is out there 365 days a year. To find the wolves you just look for people parked along the road with scopes. I got quite a few photos but none closer than this. They usually stay away from the roads.

Great Gray Owls can be found in certain areas. I got lucky with this one. from the road I saw a guy, with a point and shoot camera held high in front of him, slowly approaching the bird. By the time I could stop and get my camera out the owl had flown off. He was very apologetic but the bird was gone. I figured the guy just plain got too close to it but when I refound it, just a minute or so later, it was gulping down a mouse. I guess it must have flown off to catch some lunch.

Yellowstone is a good place to find Trumpeter Swans. These two were very cooperative for me.

I went to Cody Bible Church this morning. It was nice enough but not among the best of my church experiences. Now I plan to head back into the park for a day or so and then down to The Tetons. The plan was to go to Utah from there but I spent more time in Yellowstone than I was going to. Now I need to reassess my situation. It might be better for me to go to Colorado first instead. Maybe I'll skip Utah all together. I'll figure it out and get back with you Colorado folks soon. I promise.

It is tempting to cut my trip short. I really wasn't planning on this much winter weather. The cold itself isn't such a big issue. I have enough warm clothes and a warm sleeping bag. The bigger problem is that my camper doesn't do well in winter.

For one thing, I discovered that a couple inches of wet snow on the roof makes lowering the top hazardous. It caught me by surprise the first time it happened. And, if I have rain, snow, or ice on the outside when I fold it down, that moisture tends to sneak in through the windows. Little by little it adds up, and It's cold enough that it never really evaporates. It got to the point that the moisture on the bottom side of my mattress was starting to effect the wood under it. That's part of the reason I drove over to Cody and stayed in a hotel last night. I pulled everything out of the camper and let it dry out. It stopped raining now and this week's forecast looks a lot better than last week's so I think I should be fine. I'll play it by ear. You can pray for me on that.

Here's a quote for you. I first saw it on Dan Vissor's canoe paddle.

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

-- T.S. Eliot

Got any good quotes for me?

Take care now and I'll get you all caught up again next week.

Steve