Sept 6, Sun - day 31
West Yellowstone, Montana
Weather-low 45 (8C) high low 70s (27C) cloudy with gusty wind and scattered showers




We went to bed last night with the ping of rain on the roof and awoke to the same. No real accumulation though….still gusty winds and cloudy. Doesn’t look like we’re going to shoot the moon tonight either….it was full on the 4th and every night has been too cloudy to get a shot. To bad, because we’re camped at nearly 7,000 feet and we could get a clear shot if it weren’t for clouds, or smoke from fires.



We’d planned a day at home, not wanting to fight with the HUGE amount of traffic in the park. One thing we’d intended on doing was the laundry, but we decided to put off our least favorite task until tomorrow. We couldn’t help ourselves, about 4 pm we ventured out into the park, with the expectation of just a two hour drive. Ha, ha ha….you just never know what’s going to pop-up….and we don’t head for the barn when there are good photo ops.



We drove to Old Faithful and saw six bison along the turnoff, skilled in the art of stopping traffic. Of course we started back to check them out….kind of. When we enter into the Old Faithful area we always circle the Old Faithful Lodge, which is right next to its’ namesake (the geyser), and we realized the it was ready to blow. How nice, a parking spot right next to Old Faithful, just in time to see it blow and the car was close enough to beat the thousands of tourists leaving after the action had stopped.



On our way out of the Old Faithful area we took a little side road that we hadn’t been on before and oh boy….we spotted the six bison again. The shots were difficult because of the position of the sun; however we, and dozens more, got quite a few. The ever present (usually) volunteer ranger was on had with a walky-talky to call for law enforcement if the tourists got out of hand. It amazes me that these rangers don’t have heart attacks or a severe case of ulcers, the way many of the people treat the animals, kind of like their next door neighbors pets. No one was stomped in the ground, the bison gave everyone lots of opportunities for photos, things quieted and we started for home.



One of the animals we’ve been hoping to spot is a fox. We’d seen one in Firehole Lake Drive last year and thought there might be a chance to see another, so we turned onto the road and as we did I noticed some elk behind us. We stopped, scoped them out and saw our first royal rack bull elk (six points on each side of its’ antlers), with only four cows that we can see. It’s exited, bugling and running back and forth among the cows. We took some long shots, watched for a short time and then continued around the drive.



We’ve already exceeded our two hour time limit and now there are geysers blowing-up, geese flying over, and a beautiful sunset, but not even one fox. What a day. Wait…. there was more. When we reached the main road, the traffic was unbelievable, nonstop and not quite bumper to bumper and no one willing to let us into the flow. We hadn’t seen anything even close to this last year. It looked like we were going through Seattle during rush hour. Finally, we found a spot and got in line, making it home by 8:30 pm.



We started today’s trip thinking we could get some shots of osprey, but didn’t see even one or very many other animals, and we wondered if the large amount of traffic had an impact on the number of animal sightings. The adventure continues….



To see more of 'The Great Adventure 2009' images click HERE



To see more of our bison images click here: Animal Gallery