Day 22 | Yellowstone, NP

Out early again to get into the park before the gate lineups start. Not as spectacular a morning without the frost.

We are going to run the Lamar Valley again today. Hopefully we can get some landscape shots. I have given up on the animals. I will be quite happy with scenery.

We stopped in Mammoth Hotsprings to pick up lunch. This morning the resident elk were in town feeding… perhaps before the tour buses start arriving in quantity 😉.  Anyway, we finally have some elk to photograph, in parking lots and on front lawns.

Just east of Mammoth Hotsprings we came across a traffic jam of cars and bison. This herd was crossing the road – they get priority! It was a fairly large herd so it took a while.

This is ‘bison crossing the road’ day. The group below crossed the road right behind our car as we were coming out of Slough Creek Rd. They were a little too close for comfort. I left the photo unedited to show that I was in the car.

We stopped without parking so I could grab a quick shot out the car window of a single pronghorn off in the distance … record shot only.  Even with my 100/400 mm lens it was too far away. When I zoomed the photo to see what I had, I spotted a wolf facing in the other direction just a few feet beyond the pronghorn! So add wolf to our animal sightings! Now I know why people along the road had their scopes out.  It wasn’t the pronghorn they were looking at.

The only thing left now is a bear.  There was a mom and her cubs along here 2 days ago but we didn’t see it. So having accidentally spotted the wolf I sent up a silent request for a bear.

Sure enough, just west of Tower Junction, the cluster of parked cars revealed a black bear up the hill.

And to complete the collection, a mile or so further on, a coyote ran across the road! Quickly followed by the 5th Bison road crossing of the day.

All in all it was a great day. We have spent almost 30 hours in the park having traveled all the roads except DunRaven from Roosevelt to Tower because it’s closed.

Time to say goodbye to Yellowstone, our destination for this roadtrip. One last load of laundry to do while we are in our rental. I made a batch of peanut butter cookies the other day and froze them for the trip home. There are also a couple of meals of the chili Curtis made Tuesday night. I have a loaf of bread rising in the window and will make a some egg bites later tonight. That should give us a good head start for the second half of this trip.

We have to say goodbye to our dear friends. Tomorrow we start retracing each other’s steps for the trip home. We go to North Dakota and the Teddy Roosevelt parks that they did on the way out. They are going home by way of Cody, Custer and the Badlands in South Dakota including Devils Tower but meeting up with family along the way.

Tomorrow we are going no further than Bozeman, MT as we are spending part of the day with friends who live a couple of hours further west.