Welcome to Narnia

So today started with a pre breakfast drive to the Elk Refuge to look for horned lark, coyote and prairie falcon. All of which we managed to tick off almost straight away. As we stopped to look out and scan our second site I spotted a bird perching on the edge of some rocks only to discover it was a prairie falcon. I then saw another falcon fly in and land making that two. Just as we found this two coyote were spotting running across the top of ridge. We then drove on through the refuge where we saw hundreds of ground squirrels running around and then we stopped as I had found a bald eagle sitting on a post. Little did we realise that this was literally hawk country and practically any post you saw had some kind of bird of prey on it. These included bald eagles, swainsons hawk, red tailed hawk and kestrel. As we were looking at the kestrel we saw the horned ??? In the road, a very pretty little bird. We then drove on into the refuge where we stopped by the river and saw some more hawks and ground squirrels and some pronghorns too. And this was all before 8.30 in the morning. So after being pretty successful we went for breakfast, not at our hotel this time but at a proper breakfast restaurant as we were meeting a lady who lived in Jackson and had been and was going on another tour with Speyside. So we had a social true American breakfast before returning to our rooms so we could check out and start our journey to Yellowstone.

We drove through Grand Teton making a couple of stops along the way including Jackson Lake and Jackson Dam. On our way through Teton we stopped off at Cattleman's Bridge where the water was so high the car park had been flooded but we were able to walk around and saw a swallowtail butterfly. We also visited Jackson Lake dam where we saw a bald eagle in a tree and then were treated to a fly past by a bald eagle and a white pelican which was totally amazing and you just did not know where to look.

From here we drove up the road and stopped for a picnic by the side of the lake although surprisingly I wasn't very hungry after breakfast.

After lunch we continued our journey and just before entering Yellowstone park I thought I saw a moose but it turned out to be an elk! (Oops). After our non Moose siting we took a photo of the park sign and then made our way into the park which I can only describe as being like entering Narnia. Suddenly we were suddenly by white snow in between the trees and along the side of the road. It was truly amazing but also confusing as we it was still really hot outside. We stopped a few miles inside of the park to admire the snow, not to build snowman but to look for pika (a little creature which looks like a rabbit with short ears) and a yellow bellied marmot and once again we were lucky to see both and also a new type of ground squirrel. We also manage to cause a rodent jam as all the other cars were stopping to find out what we were looking at, most people decided they didn't want to see these but some people stopped and had a look in the scope. One man thought the marmot was a bear cub which was a little bit of a giggle! So after our successful finds we drove to our hotel with one short stop for a elk disguised as a moose (I must really learn to not shout out moose unless I am totally sure it is a moose and not an elk!).

The hotel we are staying out is the oldest hotel in Yellowstone and once we checked in and were shown to our cabins (which I like to think of as my Percy the Park Keeper shed, although the inside it much nicer) we had a quick turn around before dinner in the main hotel which was a complete contrast to our last hotel and was really very quaint and a little bit like taking a step back in time, with luxurious chairs and someone playing a piano. We then went for dinner which was lovely and then went out for a night drive. We went to pelican flats where we were lucky enough to see endless ducks and wildfowl, elk (not Moose), mule deer, coyote and muskrats. We also witnessed the elk chasing off the coyote which was pretty impressive.

After this we returned to our cabins ready for bed and another early start in the morning.