Yellowstone - October 6, 2007

Well, I always thought it would be fun to visit Yellowstone in the winter time. Little did I know that I would get my wish on this day. We woke up to about 6" of snow and more was coming down by the minute. Plus, we beat the snow plough into and through the park. Needless to say, the driving was part nerve wracking and part fun. It was nerving wracking because we had an 11:40AM flight to catch in Bozeman and if it was snowing this much the whole way, we weren't going to make it. It was fun because I don't get a chance to drive in snow much.

Anyway, the Rangers weren't even manning the station as we passed through the NE entrance prior to sunrise. At about a 20-25 mph clip, we had a long drive ahead of us. Luckily, we weren't the very first cars into the park so we had some groves to follow until it got light enough to see well. Here is a taste from our drive once things got better (no light to photo the really "fun" parts of the drive):


Even if there was wildlife close to the roads we wouldn't have seen it until we were past Roosevelt. That is when visibility improved enough to see how beautiful everything looked. Here is Floating Island Lake:


We were pretty much figuring that we would see absolutely no wildlife until we saw a car coming the other direction stop ahead of us. It started up again and passed us. As it passed we noticed the driver was really excited and clapping her hands. We drove up to where they had stopped and looked around but saw nothing. Then we started moving again and I saw why there were excited. There was a coyote on the road trotting ahead of us. We had seen a lot of coyotes in the park but this coyote was "really, really good looking" (Zoolander movie reference). To top it off, the coyote cooperated nicely and allowed us to get some of the best pictures from our trip.




This was a great encounter on our way out of the park and really topped off the week nicely for us.

The snow let up the closer we got to Gardiner so we felt comfortable stopping every now and then to enjoy the scenery and take some photos:




The drive from Gardiner to Livingston was really pretty and we saw tons of wildlife including our closest encounter with a bald eagle. Despite lots more snow coming down around the Bozeman area we made our flight and got home on time. Final tally from this partial day:

1 photogenic Coyote, 1 bald eagle, plus bison, elk, pronghorn and deer.

All in all, we had a tremendous vacation. One that we will never forget. Once again Yellowstone exceeding our high expectations. Seeing all that goes on in one of the last complete ecosystems in our country is truly a pleasure. Thanks for reading my reports over the week. The really good news is that it looks like we are going back to Yellowstone next May which will be our first spring visit. I have started the countdown already...