First Views of Yellowstone

We left my sister Cheryl's house early on the morning of Friday, June 8 to dive to Yellowstone.  Along the way we briefly stopped in Pocatello to visit with my good college friend Jeremiah.  But then we pushed on towards Yellowstone.  We had reservations that evening in the Old Faithful Inn.  We only were able to get reservations for one night, so I wanted to make sure we had enough time to enjoy it.

We did stop for gas in West Yellowstone, but didn't stop to see anything else.  I figured that we would come back out to the town at least once during our stay in the park (and we did end up doing this).  Again it was nice to present my pass and drive in without paying (this would have been our expensive visit with a 7 day pass to Yellowstone and Grand Teton costing $25).  I couldn't resist stopping when we saw our first bison.

Of course bison are so numerous in the park that after a couple days we didn't stop any more--but we decided the people that did stop were all park newbies as we had been just a short time earlier.

We did follow the rules and stayed a safe distance from the bison, however, we saw plenty of other people getting too close.  I'm not sure why so many people feel like flaunting the rules--but they are only in place to keep visitors and the animals safe.

Amy's favorite sight was seeing the young bison.  It wasn't exactly spring, but there were still enough young animals around that she was quite happy seeing them.

I'm pleasantly surprised how these shots turned out.

I also noticed the hills, especially the fallen logs, wonder if this was an area that had seen fire sweep through at some point in the recent past.

If you'll notice from the first picture above (and the video) not all of the bison were in the fields.  They are quite accustomed to wandering anywhere they want to.  It can make for some interesting traffic delays.