Yellowstone National Park - Part 2 - The Wildlife and Scenery

Yellowstone Nat'l Park was the first national park in the United States.  It was established in March of 1872.  It's boundaries take in parts of three states - Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.  We stayed in an RV park in Island Park, ID, and traveled to West Yellowstone, MT, to the park entrance and within miles of entering the park, we were in Wyoming.

There were so many amazing things about the park - the wildlife, the scenery and the geysers - so much to share with you that I decided to make two posts for the park.  The first part will be about the wildlife and the scenery - saving the geysers for the next post.  Within 7 miles of entering the park, we got to see the buffalo and their calves which are referred to by rangers as red dogs.

These two buffalo were off by themselves.

The buffalo looked pretty shaggy as they are still shedding their winter coats.

One afternoon the buffalo were crossing the road in front of us so we got some really close pictures.  In fact, the buffalo always had traffic stopped or slowed when they were spotted.  We called it buffalo traffic control.

Here's an example of buffalo traffic control.

There was an eagle nesting right by the road.  There were signs that asked tourists to not stop but people just got so excited to see the huge nest and eagle that they seemed to forget how to read.

Bill whistled to get the attention of this elk grazing by the road and the elk only looked at us.  He wasn't startled at all.  Not like the elk he hunts at home.

This was the biggest herd of elk that we saw in the park.

This yearling still needs his mama.

This elk had short, velvet covered spikes.

It was exciting to see this big bull.  He was a traffic stopper for sure.

There were pelicans in Yellowstone Lake.

We had just said we hadn't seen any deer and then we saw this one.

We were really excited to see this fox walking on the edge of the road.  In fact, he walked by the truck and we took pictures through an open window.

Since we had only read about red fox being in the park, we showed our picture to a ranger who told us this was a red fox.  It is what they call a blonde coated red fox.

We saw a lot of the little creatures like this one.

We had just seen antelope high on the slopes but couldn't get a picture when we came around a corner to see these sheep.  There were about five of them.  They looked shaggy, too.

There were many, many rivers and lakes in the park. This is the Madison River that you travel along when going into the park through the west entrance.  On our first day in the park, we saw a wolf by the side of a bridge that crossed this river.  There was actually a woman who had gotten out of her car and walked to within 15 feet of the wolf to get a picture.  We didn't get a picture but felt safer in the truck.

We drove to the north entrance so we could go to Gardiner to see the original entrance arch.  On our way we went through some high passes and saw some beautiful scenery including mountains, valleys and lakes.  We were actually looking for bears but we never got to see one during our three days in the park.

These pretty falls were named Undine Falls.  Undine Falls tumbles over 100ft in a series of three shorter drops. This is one of the easier waterfalls to see as it's right off the Upper Loop Road.

Gardiner River ran in the gorge by the falls.

We had a beautiful, sunny day when we went to Yellowstone Lake.  You can see the Absaroka Range of mountains in the background.

Lee wanted to check out the view and water temperature.  There are some hot spots in the lake but it was quite cold along this shoreline.

There were a lot of arms that ran into the lake but this was probably Stevenson Island near the Bridge Bay.  We had lunch at Lake Village and were surprised at the size of the village.  It could be classified as a small town.

We stopped at West Thumb basin to see some hot springs and found this outstanding view of the springs and Yellowstone Lake.

Wildfires in Yellowstone National Park in September of 2009 covered 6,500 acres.  Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468 square miles or 2,219,520 acres.  Looks like 6500 acres is a 

small part of the whole and they say it is the natural cycle of its ecosystem.

 

We saw burned stands of trees in many places - some being newer than others.

 

Even in the spring and summer, sudden snowstorms can cause road closures.  We ran into a snow storm when we drove on the Upper Loop to look for bear.  Not all of the winter snow has melted but the storm we encountered didn't accumulate on the ground.

That blue sky was a sucker hole.  It was pretty much cloudy and cold all day when we were in the Upper Loop but this scene was worth putting up with the weather.

The North Entrance is the first official entrance of Yellowstone National Park.  We drove to the city of Gardiner just outside the park to have lunch and ask around to see if there was any information about the Yellowstone Trail.  Part of the promotion for the YT, was the destination of Yellowstone National Park.  Unfortunately, we didn't find any signs or anyone who knew the history of the YT in the Gardiner area.  However, we were glad to see the first official entrance to the park.

We overhead another tourist telling someone that she had been told that you have to see Yellowstone Nat'l Park because there is no substitute for seeing it.  We would agree 100 percent.