Yellowstone National Park (08-17-17)

We were lucky enough to get a spot in Yellowstone, with some help from our friends Liz and Randy.

Randy is a park Ranger, and Liz volunteers in several capacities.

The last time we were here, we were in a crowded RV park with electric, water, sewer hook up, and hundreds of other RVers. This time we were in a very small, out of the way campground, and THIS was the view out our window.  We fell in love immediately!

While we are here we will have only the water in our tank, no sewer hook up, and we aren’t allowed to use a generator, so the only power we have is what we can generate with our two solar panels.

We arrived on the weekend, so Randy and Liz were able to go hiking with us and hang out for a couple of days.

Our hike to Trout Lake was an adventure.  The lake was beautiful and we hiked past it and came across two other lakes- a Trifecta!















On the way back, we looked behind us and discovered a bison had moved onto the trail, and down to the lake for a drink of water.















Getting around the park to explore can be a challenge.  There are numerous traffic jams.














One day we were up on a hill, looking for some wildlife in the river when we noticed a bison causing a traffic issue.










Soon we saw him start across the bridge.
With the amount of bison scat on the hill we were on, we were concerned that he was headed in our direction, and in any case, once he crossed the bridge, he would be between us and the truck. 



So we booked it, and made it back to the truck just in time to see him lumber up the hill we had been on!

Of course, looking for wildlife is one of the most fun things to do in Yellowstone. We had heard that there was a pack of wolves feeding on a bison-  see the wolves? No? Me either.  This kill was so far away, we couldn’t really see anything.  But…. the next day, there was a bison kill closer to the road.

I would have loved it if we were the only ones who knew about this kill but the traffic jam was intense.  People don’t even bother to pull all the way off the road!

We gave up that first day, but got up at 5 am the next morning and headed out, hoping we would be able to find a place to park our beast.

Although we weren’t the first to arrive, we did find a spot.  It was too dark to see, but we heard that there was a grizzly at the kill site.  

Once the sun came up, the bear was gone and a wolf arrived.  Even though it was pretty close, “close” is a relative term and it was hard to get a good picture.

We were rather disappointed that we never saw any bears in Yellowstone.  Liz said its a little too warm for them and they went to higher elevations. We did see lots of other animals though…

We took a nice ride down a dirt road, looking for bears.  We didn’t see any, but this beautiful fox trotted down the road, seemingly oblivious to the 5 cars following him.

We also saw several Osprey- some were in a nest and some were soaring in the sky…

There were a few elk in the park and a few we saw up north, in Gardiner, when we went exploring..

And of course there were many, many bison.

This is getting too long so……To Be Continued…..