Animals

Before we left for the West, the guy I tutor at the Literacy Council asked me to bring back a picture of a big elk.  We saw this one grazing peacefully across the Firehole River.  So, this is Dennis' elk.  According to him, this is the largest number of prongs that an elk can have. 

The bison liked to hang out near the thermal features, so you had to pay attention.  They weren't tame.

No, this isn't cropped or taken with a telephoto lens--just the zoom lens from a standard point and shoot camera.

A bison family on the road

There were so many bison that they were in huge herds all over the park.  Because the bison had right-of-way, a herd meandering across the road could stop traffic for miles, which they often did. One day they had created a massive traffic jam by wandering back and forth across the road.  In front of us was a park service employee in a Prius.  Suddenly, he pulled out of the line of traffic and started herding the bison with his car.  He used that car like an old west cowboy used his horse, successfully herding the bison off the road.  It was hysterical to watch. 

Unlike most people, we didn't see bears.  I think it was because there were so many people in the park.  We did see a couple of grizzly bears through a spotting scope that someone had set up in the Lamar Valley.  Frankly, I was glad they were a long ways away.  While we were there, several people in a national forest campground right outside of Yellowstone were killed by a grizzly.  It really freaked me out.  We had planned to do some backpacking, and I refused to do it, even though we had bear spray with us.