Bison, Elk, Bears, Oh My!

On Monday, we arrived to West Yellowstone in the afternoon.  I knew there would be lots of wildlife, so I guessed that we would see an animal within ten minutes of entering the park.  Exactly ten minutes later, we came across some bison in a meadow.  On our way to Old Faithful, we stopped at the Grand Prismatic Spring and several other thermal features like fumaroles (steam vents) and mud pots.  When we got to Old Faithful, it had just blasted so we ate our picnic dinner while we waited about an hour.  Teal wasn't that impressed when it did erupt; we were halfway to the car by the time it finished.  We did beat the traffic though like we wanted.  We left the park through the east entrance which took some time because the park is so big.  On our way, Teal spotted a male elk close to the road.  A little later, we saw a bunch of cars pulled off, so we stopped to see what they were looking at.  There was a grizzly bear in the valley, laying on a carcass that was its dinner.  Once we got out of the park, we stayed in a Walmart parking lot for the night because all of the possible campsites were booked or first-come-first-served long before we got there.

In the morning, we got some groceries and headed back into Yellowstone.  One of the roads in the park was closed, so we ended up driving within the park for a large portion of the day.  We stopped at the Mud Volcano, another thermal feature. There was a Corvette gang with 15 of them all parked in a row; not part of the park but still cool. Then we hiked the Hellroaring Trail to a suspension bridge over the river.  There were many warnings about bears and two sightings the previous day, but we didn't have any furry visitors.  The Lamar Valley in the northeast of the park is known for wolfwatching, but we didn't have any luck driving through.  By this time, it was evening, and we were ready to call it a day, but the road we wanted was backed up to a standstill 14 miles away from the park exit.  Instead, we took the south exit and stayed less than 5 miles from our next park, Grand Tetons.

We woke up just outside the entrance station to Grand Tetons and basically drove straight through; we didn't hike much.  There were several scenic turnouts though that gave a good taste of the park.

The next park was down in Nevada, so we drove south for the rest of the day.