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| Fog on the Yellowstone River |
Off we headed back into the Park with no real plan in mind. We broke out of camp early, 6:00 AM since that is supposed to be the "ideal" time to see bears and/or wolves. Cooper was fed, but we decided to get something on the run in the Park after we had stopped by a few of the "hot spots" known for bear sightings. It was such a cool morning that all along the Yellowstone River and other low lying areas fog had rolled in overnight. Quite interesting, but not helpful in our search for animals.
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| Bison on hillside |
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| Blacktail Deer |
Down by Yellowstone Lake we did find a trio of black tail deer in full velvet. One of them seemed to be quite concerned about us taking their picture... although he continued to eat the entire time. The fog began to clear as we watched these guys in the field.
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| Worried? |
The hit of the day (or so we thought at the time) was a huge hawk sitting up in the tree by the road leading away from the lake. He had gathered quite the crowd taking pictures. The comment of the day goes to a guy who wondered "is that an owl or a hawk?" NO ONE KNEW... on my goodness sakes alive. The hawk eventually flew our way and landed in a tree near us. He was quite the camera hog. In a first for us we left him before he left us. That never happens, but after 45 minutes of watching him we felt we'd better get back on the road.
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| Check out his feet |
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| 45 minutes later...still waiting for him to fly |
We stopped down by the lake for lunch...a perfect spot that did not have a single mosquito or fly. Finally! We spotted one Bald Eagle sitting up on the river bank way too far away, but digital pictures are free... unless you need yet another card because you've taken far too many pictures. A few bison and elk wandering along the open meadows and a white pelican doing his morning exercises... he appeared to fancy tai chi. The geese were playing follow the leader which looked pretty odd from our vantage point. No bears or wolves as far as we could see...also none of the pro gazers were along the roadway.
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| White pelican performs tai chi |
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| Bald Eagle sitting on the river bank |
After our lunch and Cooper's mandatory slice of ham we started the trek
back toward camp. Along the way we were fortunate enough to spot 'the
real hit of the day'... a gray wolf down
very close to the river. In fact we were able to spot him twice... he was loping upstream when we lost sight of him so we moved to another spot and found him again. Awesome!
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| Gray wolf |
For almost 30 minutes we had visual contact as he headed up through the sage... blending in amazingly well. He even managed a quick snack of some poor critter with a tail... at least that's what it looked like in the scope.
Finally he turned to head back up into the woods... thankfully we managed to keep our eyes on him the entire time.
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| A quick snack |
We were lucky to see a second wolf... now we need to find the entire pack.
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| Our lunchtime view...Yellowstone Lake looking toward West Thumb |
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| Elk cover the hillside in Hayden Valley |
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| Follow the leader...Canadian Geese |
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| Blacktail Deer |
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| Bison sitting by steam vents along the Yellowstone River |
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