Yellowstone- Wildlife park

This is a wildlife park and a geologists dream. This place is fascinating and you never know what you are going to see that day. The animals and sometimes the geysers are unpredictable here. We camped at norris, which we liked because it's a little bit away from the main road. This place is super busy but there were still a lot of campgrounds not open yet so we got pretty lucky to find a spot. If you plan to come here in July or August maybe try reserving at one of call ahead campgrounds but you might have to try a year in advance! When I tried to find us a place it was all booked back in January. 

If people are pulled off on the side of the road you can bet they've spotted an animal. There are elk and tons of bison that can be seen from the roads. They can get pretty close to you but try to keep your distance as several people have been gored by them, two this year already. I have a nice zoom lens so don't worry we didn't get too close intentionally that is, sometimes the animals surprised us.

So glad we bought binoculars, Matt's new favorite toy now.

I thought this was so strange. I guess she wanted her goose to see Old Faithful too.

We saw old faithful go off twice while we were there, when we were there it was about every hour and twenty minutes or so. They post when the next prediction is at the visitor center. The plates are moving here constantly so if seeing old faithful is on your bucket list make sure you get here because who knows how long it will be around for. We waited for a while the first time for it to burst forth so they anticipation was high with each teasing bubble of water coming from it but then it finally spewed forth impressively. It got us a bit wet too. If you want a really great view go to the second floor balcony of the old faithful inn to really get the full effect of how high it shoots into the air. 

This was shot from the balcony of the Inn, Gives you a better perspective just how high it shoots into the air.

Marmots on our hike.

We love these cute little sun bathers

 We saw lots pools, geysers and basins here that were all different colors either because of the minerals such as the sulfur (which is potent here, surprisingly Matt still wanted to eat eggs after smelling the rotten egg smell emitting from the pools) or because of the bacteria that thrives in these hot waters.

 One of our favorites we went to was the dragons breath it really looked like there could be A dragon hiding in the cave. I also liked the mud valcano.

We woke up early one morning, like 4:30 am kind of early to go to the Lamar valley because we were told that's where you can see lots of wildlife, including the wolves that had been reintroduced back into the park back in 1996 (after not being there for 60 years after humans wiped them out, they were brought back and it was amazing to learn how much they have restored the ecological system to what it should be) 

We mostly saw more elk and bison on our drive out there but the sunrise was spectacular and made it worth it to me. And the lighting was perfect for taking pictures of the animals we did see, loved it!

We saw lots of people waiting and staring through their very expensive looking scopes trying to catch a glimpse of something. It was too cold for us to just stand and wait with our binoculars so we decided to hike. We hiked the slough creek trail and it was eventful.

We came across a pronghorn that was a bit aggressive but also injured so he couldn't really charge us, thankfully because we later learned they are one of the fasted animals maintaining speeds of 60 mph and for long periods of time too. We also saw lots more marmots! One ran right by Matt's foot and scared him to death. 

Beautiful morning hike

The pronghorn

And his lady friends

Just a sunbathing marmot

Looking for elk in the meadow

But then, when I was looking at a field of elk through the binoculars we turned back to the trail to discover a bison standing there staring at us. It was really terrifying. We climbed up on a rock to get some distance between him and us. The bison debated whether or not he should pass us or not but eventually he trotted right past us. 

Staring straight at us!

My view of him from the rock

Walking on by us

How close he was to us

The meadow at the end of our hike

Our pronghorn friend found a place to rest

We hiked down uncle toms trail to get a a great view of the lower falls in the Yellowstone canyon. This trail is mostly a lot of stairs, they weren't too bad coming back up just a bit of a work out.

Lower falls

The canyon

We made it

 We also checked out the lake there and went on this boring hike to the natural rock bridge. I saw brought because it was mostly on paved road to get there and then you couldn't even go on the bridge when we got there but it was pretty and we saw a marmot. 

At the lake, it was a bit breezy

The natural bridge

 We had one animal fatality along the road. We hit a bird or maybe we captured him in our car first and then he went to birdie heaven. Either way I felt terrible poor little bird. You can see his head sticking out here, I'll spare you the close up that Matt took.