Monday June 5th 2017

Today I was back to touring Yellowstone National Park. My goal today was to visit the northeast corner of the park. The Lamar River valley along the park access road from Cooke City MT is known to be a major wildlife area. To get there I passed over Dunraven Pass at 8859 feet. It is the highest pass on a main road in the park. The snow pack on the sides of the road was still over 6 feet high in some areas.

View of the expansive Yellowstone Caldera.  The snow covered Mount Sheridan is  on the far side of the caldera.   

A pair of deer above the overlook of the Yellowstone Caldera.

There is still plenty of snow above eight thousand feet.

Yellowstone River Canyon north of Tower Falls. The spires are the result of volcanic activity and are the origin of the name Tower Falls. The cliff wall at the far end of the picture is the home to several mountain goat mothers and kids. I am going with the crowd of tourists and calling them goats.  I think they may actually be Big Horn Sheep.

Mountain goat (rear end) and kid to the right at center of picture

Kid is partially behind mother in center of picture.

Mother and Kid (bottom center) just came out from under the overhang.

The Lamar River Valley is the home to large herds of bison, the winter range for elk and many of the parks predators. The recently re-introduced gray wolf population live in this area as do grizzly bears. I was hopping to get a glimpse of any of the predators. I saw many many bison, a few deer and a couple of prong horns, but no bears, wolves or elk.

Lamar River Valley. I didn’t know until I was driving away that a bison was lying on the ground in a depression no more than 30 feet from where I was standing.

Lone bison on the far side of the Lamar River.

A few lazy bison on the side of the road.

I didn’t take as many pictures today. All fifty can be viewed in my Google Photos album called Yellowstone June 5 2017. Click on the link to visit the shared album. Many of the photos are at the full zoom of my camera to get shots of distant deer and mountain goats with young.

The number of cars, buses and rental motorhomes in the park seems to be increasing every day. Today I was in a steady line of traffic from the time I entered the park until I turned north at the Canyon intersection about 40 miles. Unlike other days I didn’t see any animals over that stretch either. It rain fairly hard overnight, so the bison may have retreated into the trees.

Tomorrow I’ll focus on the southeast section of the park.