Animals Everywhere

Today we went to Lamar Valley on the way to Bear Tooth Pass. We saw bears, black and brown, brown are the grizzly type, antelope, elk, deer, herds of bison, and at least three chipmunks. Whenever an interesting animal appeared, a traffic jam pointed to its location. One brown bear probably had an audience of a hundred humans and it wasn’t even close to the road. Bison however are easy to see so they only draw small crowds. At the park headquarters they show movies of elk ramming cars. They like to make the point that these animals are wild and unpredictable. There was a news story last week about a bison goring and tossing a spectator into the air. It’s not Pamplona but maybe a new sport, the running of the buffalo will be born at Yellowstone. We are smarter than those who run the bulls in Spain because we wear crash helmets when photographing the wildlife. That way if we get tossed by elk or bison, our heads are protected. We are safety conscious, responsible wildlife photographers.

We drove to Bear Tooth Pass and got to 10,500 feet when it started to rain. It just wasn't worth a soaking to go over the top, so we turned around and headed back to Yellowstone. Back at our home base, Mammoth hot Springs Campground, we saw we had ridden about 160 miles. I'm beat. Time for a steak dinner and about 10 hours of sleep. I know this won't happen.

Last night we had a near new moon meaning a perfectly dark sky, no clouds and the beginning of a meteor shower. I can't sleep under these circumstances. I parked my head in the window of our tent and watched the milky way for a good hour counting a dozen meteors and about 8 satellites. Geek fun.