Day 31 – Yellowstone National Park

It was another awesome day, full of waterfalls and wildlife. We headed out for the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. As we entered the park, we saw the same coyote in the same place as yesterday morning. He had cars stopped, watching him. Every time there was a traffic jam, we knew some animal was ahead. We saw 7 waterfalls today and the coyote, buffalo, deer, elk, and a juvenile bear. At Canyon (which was really crowded) we went to the visitors center, saw a movie, looked at the exhibits. We filled out a survey and got a lovely Yellowstone book. Then we went to the upper falls, the smaller of the two big falls. The North Rim was closed for resurfacing, so we drove the South Rim to Artists Point. The view of the lower falls and the canyon there was just amazing. It looks fake in some of my photos.

From Canyon, we took the long way home up by Tower Falls and through Mammoth. The scenery was incredible. We went up high in the mountains. There was still some dirty snow on the ground. All through the park, there are still major signs of the 1988 fire. Natural reseeding is happening, but there are still lots of burned trees and acres of fallen trees. The wildflowers were everywhere and truly beautiful. It did start to rain some, but it didn’t destroy the beauty. We stopped at Tower Falls and Undine Falls. There was another big traffic jam – cars just stop in the middle of the road and traffic backs up, sometimes for miles. One time was for the juvenile bear. He was eating alongside the road and oblivious to the cars. Later, a buffalo crossed the road a few cars in front of us and headed towards us on the shoulder of the road. I got a great photo out of that. Just before Mammoth, we were stopped for quite a while. A car coming towards us said that buffalo were crossing the road. By the time we got through, there was no sign of the buffalo.

We got to West Yellowstone at 6:30 and went to dinner at Three Bears. I had buffalo stew and Bill had prime rib. It is much cooler tonight after the late afternoon showers we had. But today was almost perfect! I posted 26 more photos, just a sampling, in the Yellowstone1 link on the left.