Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Yellowstone Trip--Day 4 (May 20th)

We woke up early to a cool 30 degrees in the tent. It was very difficult to get out of the sleeping bag and get dressed in a 2 person tent in the cold. We warmed up the car and headed back towards Lamar Valley. Once again, just past Norris we saw the same grizzly bear near Grizzly lake. This time there wasn't nearly the crowd and the bear was closer to the road. We were able to park and both of us got out and watched the bear for about 10 minutes before he left our sights again.
Back on the road, Mel fell back asleep as i stopped at the Yellowstone Picnic area again where the bighorn ram from yesterday was posing for the crowd. I snapped a few shots and continued on.
We didn't see too much in the valley and took a walk on Pebble Creek trail. Not much wildlife on the trail, but there was a Yellow-bellied Marmot.
We headed back towards Mammoth for lunch and only stopped twice. Once was only for a couple of mountain goats.
The next stop we came upon a large crowd watching a pack of wolves feeding on a bison. The wolves were about 600 yards away and it was difficult to see exactly how many there were. It looked like six of them and they were near Blacktail Plateau. It probably was the Blacktail group of wolves. I also found out after looking at the pics at home that they were feeding on the bison's calf too.
We ate lunch in Mammoth and looked at some of the thermals just outside of the town.
The rest of the day we spent venturing just west of our campsite where we saw a sandhill crane and watched some ground squirrels.
We did stop at Gibbons falls for some waterfall pics at the end of the day.
Bed early again, we need to get up early for some sunrise pictures as we travel through Grand Tetons National Park tomorrow.

Check out the many photos I am processing as I continue through the days of this trip...click here

1 comment:

Josh Jones said...

wow great shots chris! I bet that zoom came in handy with the grizzly