Yellowstone Part III: Yellowstone Wildlife

Yes, we actually entered the national park!  I am so glad we were here this week because the awesome government shutdown began two days after we returned home.  Talk about good timing!

Can I just take one second to say I love our new camera!  I had a blast taking as many pictures as I could. Although I think Parker still beat me on overall number of pictures taken inside the park.

Anyway...Ashlee, Lisa, Parker and I got up at 5:30 am to head into the park. Unfortunately it was snowing so it took twice as long to get there, effectively negating our early rise.  Many of the animals are out only early in the morning so we were concerned that we would miss out on some of the more rare sights, but we were lucky this year!  We saw not one, not two, but three bears!!!

Bears

Bear #1 - A cute little cub.  Others around us thought it was a black bear. No sign of mama bear anywhere.

We were pretty close to this guy - you can sort of tell from this pic of Parker.

 

Bear #2 - An adult black bear.  This guy was pretty far away, but he looked cool against the snow that had fallen.

This next picture is zoomed all the way in on my big lens. Pretty decent compared to the one above!

Bear #3 - Grizzly bear!  Even though this grizzly wasn't full grown, we were still a little nervous to get out of the car for this picture!

Okay, we did see a whole bunch of other animals in addition to the bear.  

Bison

Firstly, there were a ton of bison as usual. I say bison and not buffalo because if you have ever spoken to Brian you will know that he cares deeply about calling them by the correct name. Apparently, buffalo are only in Africa and the bison has just been incorrectly called buffalo for hundreds of years. So we saw bison.

I always find it interesting that the animals wander so closely to geysers. I guess they can tell if they are getting too hot. Here is an example.

The next picture is part of a funny story.  While we were driving into the area where bears and wolves can usually be seen, we came across a small herd of bison off the side of the road.  We stopped for a second so that we could take some close up pictures.  While we were stopped, the herd decided it should cross the road in front of us.  We decided to wait it out because those horns can do some serious damage to a car.

Just as the herd was about across, they changed their minds and went back again.  It took forever! I think the guy in front knew exactly what he was doing...

Elk

There were a few different elk herds near the West Yellowstone entrance.  The female pictured below was close enough to touch.  I think Parker would have if we would have let him!  We also saw quite a few bull elk. I think we decided the first one pictured below was a 5-point and the second was a 4-point.

Moose

Okay, the moose we technically saw outside the cabin and not in Yellowstone.  But hey, this is where I am putting all of the animal pictures so it works for me.  I think it would be an incomplete year at the cabin if we didn't see moose outside at some point.  On this particular evening, we saw a mother and its baby.  By the time I got the right lens on the camera, I could only get a good pic of the baby.

Here is where I got into a little trouble with Brian. As I was chasing after the mother and her baby, suddenly a Bull Moose appeared out of nowhere.  We don't see too many of the bulls and they are not very nice.  Of course I stopped to take a picture before skedaddling out of there before it could charge after me!

Pronghorn Deer

We stopped several times in the hopes that we were sighting some wolves or coyotes from a far distance, but it usually turned out to be pronghorn deer.  These three were running all over the place.

Swans

We had fun watching these two swans floating down the river.  After they would get about 100-200 yards from where they wanted to be, they would take flight and start all over again.