Saturday June 3rd 2017

In my last two blog entries on Yellowstone park I incorrectly pictures of female Mule Deer as Elk. I wasn’t really convinced they were Elk, but I didn’t know of any other animal in the area as big as Elk. I have updated the previous two blog entries with the correct description of the animals.

I got into Yellowstone National Park shortly after nine this morning. The long line at the entry toll both was representative of the volume of traffic in the park today. My goal was to explore the northwest corner of the park. I drove directly to the Mammoth Hot Springs and Gardiner area without stopping at many of the sights, since I would be returning on the same route.

I only took a little over one hundred pictures today. The number of pictures is down because the traffic prevented me from stopping in a few areas. The terrain is also very different from the geothermal features in the areas I was in the last two days. All of the pictures can be found in my Google Photos Album Yellowstone June 3 2017. Click on the link to view them all.

I also saw a lot of animals that I didn’t get a chance to photograph. Two in particular standout. I saw a Black Bear a short distance off the road in an area that stopping wasn’t possible and a Coyote was trotting along the road in the opposite direction.

Gardiner River flowing out of the park toward the town of Gardiner MT. The water was crashing hard against the foot bridge.

The Gardiner MT area at 5224 ft. Mammoth Hot Springs is a thousand feet higher and I drove down a mountain another thousand feet to get there.

An interesting marker between Gardiner and Mammoth Hot Springs.

Undine Falls East of Mammoth Hot Springs on the way to the Tower-Roosevelt Intersection. I turned back at Tower-Roosevelt. The area east of there is for another day.

Representative of the land between Mammoth Hot Springs and Tower-Roosevelt.

Village of Mammoth Hot Springs below the Hot Springs Terraces on mountain side.

Boardwalks and steps climb the terraces of the hot springs.

On the way out of the park I had to share the road with a herd of bison. They didn’t bump into the car but there were a few close calls. Larger bison would side bump another bison and force them to go between the cars and down the other side.

Here come the bison.

Passing to the left of the car.

Passing to the right of the car. Lots of shedding matted hair.

Two minutes later they’re still coming.

This one couldn’t make up his mind. Left? Right? Over the top of the big gray thing? At the last minute he went down the right side.

They lean young.

Running to catch up on the left.

Running to catch up on the right. This one had a broken horn. Probably from fighting.

Tomorrow I plan to sleep in. The heavy Sunday park visitor count doesn’t need me too. I’ll tour in the West Yellowstone area outside the park. I still have three days next week to see more of the park.