Close Encounters

Lower Falls Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone is great for lots of things but very little phone signal or internet so there are a lot of posts to catch up on.  Driving around the vast and varied landscape was an interesting experience.  its a busy place, and unless you are quite fit and at the moment we are not - its hard to get away from the masses of tourists.  we did make the trek up Mount Washburn - or rather Dr Fred did, I only went about halfway, stunning views cross the park but very busy - and quite a steep hike on a sore knee!!!

view from Mount Washburn

However this does have advantages as when there's a crowd it usually means there is something interesting to be seen.  We were crawling along with the masses to see the lower Falls - wonderful waterfall pictures at the beginning of post... First we spotted two single bull bison just ambling along the grassland.

first bison sighting

which we were very excited about and then we saw a whole herd of Bison with babies and lots of young adult males who were rolling about in the dust

Bison Herd

we saw loads of Elk and deer as well so our wildlife spotting quota was looking good.

Day 3 saw us take a rest day, Dr Fred was a bit fed up of driving, and weak from the Mount Washburn experience... so we just did a small local hike near the Indian Creek Camping we were staying at.... also we had had a bad night with temperatures dropping to below zero - unusual for this time of year but I got up in the night and the tent was solid on the outside with ice!!! We were frozen, sleeping with as many clothes as we could fit into the sleeping bags like mummies trussed up... Sleeping in the tent is starting to wear a little thin!!!

We had a nice walk around the local terrain, we were about half an hour out on the trail when we met a sheriff ranger chappie, looking very smart in his pristine uniform, with a shiney badge and jaunty little hat, I wanted to take his photograph but he was quite cross with us as we didn't have bear spray with us so I decided not to ask!!! We didn't get eaten by a bear!  I sang loud campfire songs to warn them we coming..  Even Dr Fred wanted to run away!

The cold nights were taking there toll so we booked into a motel in Thermopolis which was on route to our next booked eclipse campsite, so this morning we packed up a damp tent and headed out of the park.  We agreed to stop and look at the mud volcano and Dragons lair it would be our last geothermal experience for the time being

mud volcano

dragons lair, and it sounded like a dragon too!!!

Both very impressive but what really made the day was the bison wandering down the road, the first one right next to the I could have touched it only sensibly I kept the window wound up and had a split second as it ambled past and we were driving to get a picture

Bison out of car window

then about 10 minutes down the road was a second bison, he decided he would cross right in front of us so I was able to get a rather bizarre but close up and personal picture of Dr Fred with said beast...

Bison just sauntering past our car

the excitement mounted to be completely finished to a frenzy by the sight of a Grizzly bear feeding on a road kill elk across the way.  There was a meadow and a river between us so the pictures are not amazing but he did look good through the binoculars and I was very, very happy to have seen a Grizzly in Yellowstone.