5/22/14

We went to West Yellowstone earlier in the week and saw an elk in the Madison River, standing there looking at the people gawking at her. We also got stuck behind a bison jam of four females and their calves. There was nowhere for them to get off the road for about a half mile, so we moved very slowly, with the mothers trying to herd their calves away from the cars.

Down at the eagles nest, we saw two eagles trying to get a goose out of their nest. The eagles were none too happy and the goose didn't want to move.

I believe I had the dumbest reason ever for someone wanting to change camp sites given to me by a camper during the week. They came up to my window and first wanted to change sites because they had asked for a tent only site. I explained to them that they were in a tent only site. They said "no they weren't, because there were three RV's in the sites around them". I think I was successful in finally getting them to understand that tent only sites are often mixed in with RV sites and that what they probably wanted was to be in a tent only loop, which at the time we couldn't do for them. They then said they needed to change sites because "their site was too windy". I explained to them that all sites will be about equally windy and they told me that I was wrong because "they had walked down to a site three spots away and it wasn't as windy in that site". I wasn't able to convince them that the wind had simply died down a little while they were in front of the other site. In an effort to shed myself of these people, I found a site in another loop that should have made them happy. After I completed the paperwork, they said "never mind, they would stay in the site they are in". I guess I have to learn to speak Chinese if I'm going to be able to help some of these people.

Monday we drove the south loop of the park. We didn't see much wildlife but we did notice that the snow is melting quickly and the river levels are up. Here is a photo of Kepler Cascades, just east of Old Faithful.

 

We also saw an interesting cloud formation between the Norris and Canyon Junctions.

 

I obviously need to clean my camera lens again.

Tuesday we drove to Idaho Falls and returned to camp via Grand Teton National Park. The peaks are beautiful, as always.

On our way north through the park we saw an elk in velvet and got a couple of decent close ups.

 

 

The south entrance of Yellowstone still has quite a bit of snow.

Wednesday we drove up to Bozeman but took the longer way back, through Ennis, because of the construction on more direct route. The longer route took us by Earthquake Lake, which is a place we want to come back to and spend more time looking around at all the geological exhibits.

 

It's a beautiful 72 degrees this afternoon, but at over 6000 ft. altitude seems warmer than that.