Posts Tagged ‘snowshoeing’

Yellowstone: Day 4

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Outside our hotel is a group of deer that seem to hang around at all times. This morning they were especially cute; they were all huddled up next to a house trying to stay warm. It is a nice thing to wake up and have wildlife basically sitting on your doorstep.

There was a lot less wind and bad weather today and even some really nice sun that greeted us frequently throughout the day. The remnants of yesterday still remained and the snow plows and blowers were out in full force trying to clear away all the snow off the roads.

It was really fun to watch the snow being jettisoned hundreds of feet into the air. After the roads were cleared we decided to take advantage of the sun and go snow shoeing. We went out to Lost Lake which included a hike through the Petrified Forest, and a beautiful walk through a snowy canyon way tat led to the lake. We also found a kill. it was an old dead buffalo that had been eaten from the inside. It was gruesome but interesting to see.

After our snowshoeing was over we drove around Lamar Valley looking for animals. Sadly still no wolf sightings and in fact there are very little animal sightings at all. It seems like our luck may be changing soon however. We found a beautiful bull elk that we were able to follow for a while. This means that the elk are moving into the valley which means that the wolves should soon follow.

And as our final good sign for our changing luck was a couple of coyotes running across the road right in front of us. They didn’t stay long but we got a couple of pictures.

Tomorrow is a new day and with that we hope, as always, to find and photograph wolves.

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Yellowstone: Day 2

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

Today was the first day of our real expedition. We headed out in sub-zero temperature in search of the wildlife and beauty that Yellowstone has to offer. We started out early and headed into the park. We got to see some more elk at Mammoth Hot Springs, one of which was nursing.

Then we started out on our long days journey to Lamar Valley. We saw all sorts of animals including coyotes, bison, elk, bald eagles, and big horns. However most of them were to far away to get actually decent photos of them. The big horns however decided to cooperate with us and get close enough to photo graph as they ate their lunch.

After that my dad and i went snowshoeing into a canyon at Pebble Creek. It was beautiful, with high stony walls, snow hatted rocks and a partially frozen river.

Due to fear that we may have been very close to encroaching upon a bear den we decided to take the safe route and return to our car for lunch. After that we headed out to see if the otters from last year were still in their same spot. Sadly we saw no otters today but hope to see them soon.

It was a beautiful day but the wildlife wasn’t super active. I am hoping for more activity tomorrow and hopefully some wolves. For now it was just another beautiful day in Yellowstone.

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