Yellowstone 2009 day 1 and 2

Jun 3, 2009

From the archives

Yellowstone 2009

This vacation was very much needed. Work was becoming well a nightmare and I desperately needed to get away for a while. My parents had been talking about going up to Yellowstone for a few weeks and on Mothers day asked me to look for hotel rooms online to accommodate 3 possibly 4 couples…. Yea that didn’t go down very well. With the days ticking away and drawing blanks online (and KSL says travel is down, no one is traveling. liars!) worrying that we were not going to find a place, we finally found one. I’m guessing it was a last minute cancellation because it was perfect. It had 3 bedrooms, a pull out couch, a kitchen and living room. And it was in the area we wanted to be in.

It’s one thing to go on vacation with my Parents. It’s another to go on vacation with my parents and my little brother. Its completely another story to go on vacation with my parents, 2 brothers, their wives, and their children. That was very interesting. Here are my nephews helping me decide what to do the next day.

 

Due to the amount of people we had and the lack of a car big enough we went into the park in 3 separate cars attempting to stay together as a caravan…. Yea that was fun. The first day My mom, worrying the weather was going to turn suggested we try to get the east side of the park done first, starting at Mud Volcano and then working our way up north. Of course this required some back tracking but it worked out. On the way up we saw some elk in near the Madison River.

 
And a quick stop by Gibbon Falls

  Look at how far that forest goes, just miles and miles of unmolested woods. Its absolutely beautiful.

From there we stopped by Beryl Spring.

 
We finally arrived at Mud Volcano and while waiting for the rest of the caravan we walked up to Sulpher Cauldron, which is not very photogenic, but I did want to share this picture of a place the road collapsed when a new steam vent opened up.

 

I have already shared pictures of Mud Volcano so I won’t share too many for this post. Here is a cool one of a buffalo chillin by a hot spring.

After that we decided to go back up the way we came and hit a few spots on the way to Dunraven Pass.

Us at the lower falls of the Yellowstone.

A cool pic I caught of a very unafraid crow.

  And the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone

From Above

Playing with settings on my camera I caught the “in motion” image of the Yellowstone River before it plummets down the upper falls.

After hitting these few stops we were all hungry and stopped by the Tower Junction for some food. Of course it was 4:05 and they closed the restaurant at 4 so we were screwed. Everybody was hungry and getting ornery and we needed to eat. My brother Nate had the worst of this with wife who had a newborn, so she wanted to go home, and they did. The rest of us were starving and pissy. So we found some pre made food in the small grocery store here and were good to go.

We wanted to head up to the Lamar Valley and see some wildlife, and of course Tower Falls which is on the way.

Here is the first bear we saw.

Here is a pretty valley just North of Dunraven Pass.

 
Here is Tower Falls again playing with settings on my camera. I like the way this one turned out.

We decided to hike down this time, despite the sign that warned the end of the trail was closed due to flooding.

This is a cool image of the Yellowstone Canyon.

Unfortunately the trail ended before we could get to the lower view of Tower Falls. So that was kind of a pointless, painful hike on our part, but it was pretty.

Here is bear number 2 we saw this day.

This one was rather close to the road and I walked out to take his/her picture. There was a ranger who was allowing crowds to get surprisingly close, probably due to the absence of cubs. However I felt like she was trying to get away from all the people and convinced the family to leave rather than chase her

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This is an image I took when we passed a LARGE group of people with HUGE lenses all pointed the same way. No one was taking pictures, and I have no clue what they were waiting for. (although this is the spot the year before there were grizzlies so that is probably it) I thought I saw something so I took this, nothing there. But it is a pretty nature shot I guess.

After this The remaining caravan decided to hit petrified tree so we left the group and headed up towards that.

Petrified tree.

The remaining stump is 1 of 3 that were here, the rest chipped away by souvenirists, so this remaining one was fenced in… cemetery style. Hehe.

Moose we saw near Petrified Tree.

We waited for what seemed like hours for the rest of the family to arrive, before getting mad and deciding to head back. When we did of course we passed them, so we turned around and met back up with them. Apparently they stopped again at what they thought were elk (which we had stopped at, saw elk and left) and they turned out to be Bighorn Sheep and a wolf. Darnit.

Even though the light was fading my brother wanted to go to Mammoth Hot Springs so we headed up that way.

Here is bear number 3 we found.

Another pretty valley view, with what appears to be a random hotspring or two.

Bear number 4.

Again this one was really close to the road. We actually saw 3 or 4 more bears, but they were so far way that even with my telephoto lens they were just dots so I don’t really count them.

Some antelope.

This is Mammoth Hot Springs from afar… and my brothers car.

Lower terrace

Above Canary Springs

Canary Springs. I like the lighting and the Reflections

Again, above Canary Springs.

Very interesting lighting during dusk.

After that the light was gone in fact the above image I had to use a flash. So after driving through the upper terrace we headed back to our condo. Upon returning we realized my other brother and wife had packed up and left.
All and all day two we packed a lot of adventuring in. It was good times.
Stay tuned for day 3 and 4.

Including original comments from the archive.

• Ashley: Oh, so much fun.  I want to go to Yellowstone sometime.  I've never been. I am always paranoid I am going to fall into some boiling hot spring and die or something...as would be appropriate for me.

2 years ago

• aubrey: you got to see 5 bears in the wild! Lucky and There was water at the canary springs! Super Lucky! you guys got some great pictures! Can't wait to see days 3 and 4!

2 years ago