Yellowstone National Park

If we thought we saw a lot of wildlife in the Rocky Mountain National Park we had another thing coming! Within about 5 minutes of being in Yellowstone we saw a bison stood about 3 metres off the road side. Everyone was slowing down to get a look and a photo, they are enormous animals! From this distance you could see all it's matted fur hanging off a bit like dread locks. Their heads are huge, even for such a big animal their head seemed to take about 1 third of their body mass. We were seriously excited having seen a bison, and so close, what we would soon come to realise is that Yellowstone is crammed full of Bison. After the first few times seeing herds of bison and bison calf, which were so cute, it became a bit of a running joke that if any car was stopped it had probably seen yet another bison. We almost started getting annoyed that all we could ever see were masses of Bison! We wanted to see some bears and wolves!

As with all the parks overnight parking was prohibited except in campsite spots, we were lucky and found the last spot in a campsite, the spot was only free as the previous occupants had left early and were meant to be there until the 20th. Our luck had changed! We had read in Lonely Planet that the best place to see wolves and bears was in Lumar Valley, it was quite a drive away from our campsite but we were keen to see the park and some wolves! On the way there we noticed some cars stopped in the road, on the other side there were 2 park ranger cars stopped and the rangers were shepherding the cars along. This was definitely no bison. As we approached we slowed down and saw a black bear sat about 10 metres up the hillside. We weren't allowed to stop but slowed down enough to get a good look and a photo, it was amazing! The bear was sat down and looked just like a cartoon with a kind of bored facial expression. We were impressed by Yellowstone already.

A little bit further up the road we saw a huge herd of deer, probably around 30 grazing on the side of a mountain, we stopped and got some photos and watched the deer for a while, they are such graceful creatures, even when they ran they kind of danced along. It was approaching dusk and this is the best time to see wolves so we pressed on to Lamar Valley. We were constantly on the look out but didn't see any wolves :(. We stopped to take a photo of some of the scenery and said hello to a man with binoculars, he asked if we wanted to see an osprey in a nest, obviously we did! We used his binoculars and sure enough at the top of a half broken tree trunk was an osprey perched in a nest. The guy said she had been there for a week or so and was sitting on eggs. We would never have seen that without the man so we were really grateful. As we drove further into the valley we realised that we really needed some binoculars, the landscape was so vast that a lot of the wildlife was miles away. We spotted a big group of cars stopped in a lay by all looking into telescopes or binoculars, we thought maybe they had seen some wolves so we pulled up and asked a guy what they were looking at, he had no idea and had only stopped because everyone else had! We figured we'd try our luck anyways and pulled up. We eventually found out that the attraction was pretty impressive, on the other side of the valley a grizzly bear had caught a buffalo and was eating it and guarding it from other animals. The man we had asked earlier was kind enough to let us use his telescope to have a look. It was amazing! You could see the bear crouched over his kill looking really angry and obviously scaring off any lurking coyotes or wolves from his dinner. Every so often he would take a big bite from the buffalo and then continue looking around and guarding. We couldn't believe what we had just seen, it was amazing to see a grisly bear in its natural habitat and to see nature at work.

Unfortunately as hard as we tried we didn't see any wolves, we did however see an awful lot of our friends the bison! They even decided to come onto the road in front of the van! They were all crossing the road and ahead of us one head butted an RV so we decided to keep our distance, we were kind of stuck when a car came up pretty quickly behind us, at first we thought it was some idiot trying to overtake but then we realised it was a ranger car and he drove right up to the bison and they left the road, the ranger drove past and off and immediately the bison came back into the road! We thought the ranger was clearing the road for us but he didn't seem to care much once he was through! We were pretty sure that we weren't meant to try to herd the wild bison and didn't want them to head but Suzanne so we just went really slowly and eventually got through.

That evening we pulled into our campsite and it was, as it had been all day, chucking it down with rain, we stood under a tree for a while gathering up the courage to cook our dinner in the rain when a girl walked up to our campsite, thinking we were going to be told we were in the wrong spot or something she said she had a tarp and a fire at their site and did we want to join them! So we went over and met Jeff and Layla who were 21 and 22 and from near Milton Keynes! We offered them smores in exchange for their cover and fire and had a good chat about our travels, it was really random but a nice evening.

The next morning we set off to see the famous Geysers that yellowstone is known for. Whereas the previous day had been raining constantly it was now snowing, a lot. We drove to each of the main geysers and jumped out to look around, they were very impressive, each one was different, some of them were saphire blue and calm whereas others were bubbling and spewing steam into the air, there were even some that looked like clay that was slowly bubbling. The colours around the geysers were amazing with the stones changing from brown to orange to bright yellow and then into light and dark blues. They were quite a sight, despite the snow we soldiered on and even did a 2 mile hike up to a beautiful waterfall which was definitely worth braving the unrelenting weather.

Our last stop was the 'Old Faithful' geyser which erupts impressively every 90 minutes or so. We had tried to see it when we arrived and stood through a hailstorm waiting but it had apparently gone off early so we had missed it. This time the snow had finally stopped there was no rain or hail and the sun was actually out! We got there in great time as we only had to wait 5 minutes for it to erupt, it was quite impressive with huge spurts of water reaching around 30ft in the air accompanied by a mass of steam. As with the rest of the geysers this steam that came off them smelt a lot like rotten eggs, due to the sulphur in the geysers. The smell was certainly an experience, especially when it wafted directly into your face!

That evening was uneventful although the campsite we were staying in had had 2 bear sightings that day so we were a little on edge when walking to the toilets! We got up early the next day and drove out of Yellowstone, the route we took brought us high into the mountains where the snow was even heavier. There were warnings for icy roads and the snow storm continued the entire time, this resulted in a Narnia like environment with all the trees and grass covered in sticky white snow. It lent for some excellent photos which are in the album adjacent.

We finally made it out of Yellowstone (it is an enormous park!) and were on our way to Salt Lake City!