Yellowstone National Park

We had a WONDERFUL time in Yellowstone! It had been quite a while since we had been there, so we all enjoyed remembering so many of the awesome things there.

We had been told to watch for a bald eagle’s nest just a few miles after entering the park. We all kept watching for it, but hadn’t seen it in the time period we expected. Just as we were wondering if we had missed it, we encountered a traffic jam along the road. As we got closer and directed our view the direction of all of the pointed lenses, we saw the eagle’s nest. We passed it on our way both in and out of the park every day, but here are some of our best pictures…
A trip to Yellowstone isn’t complete without buffalo sightings. We saw buffalo all around the park during our visit. Again, here are some of my favorites…
We apparently missed seeing a bear by about 3 minutes. On the road out of Mammoth Hot Springs, cars were pulled over on both sides of the road on a very narrow stretch of road. We rolled down our window and asked people what the excitement was about. They said there was a bear just off the road in some trees! We had commented that on our prior trips to Yellowstone, bears were more abundantly seen, yet we hadn’t seen one this trip. By the time we found a wider point of the road to pull off and had walked back to the area of the sighting, the crowd reported that the bear had retreated further into the woods. Bummer!

We did see our share of elk, too. Elk aren’t quite as exciting to us, since we have elk heads in our homes and sheds, and deer in our backyard on a daily basis. (I returned home to a mangled and mowed down garden, by the way.) But these sights were cool…
We loved the walk to Artist’s Point overlooking the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and Lower Falls…
We enjoyed the walks around the geysers and hot springs (the first picture being Ryan’s favorite…no…second favorite geyser, Spasm Geyser)…
And we marveled at some of the other beautiful views and scenery…
Of course, Ryan’s favorite part of Yellowstone (and, thus, his favorite geyser) was Old Faithful, now on 92 minute intervals…
As most of you know, Ryan is a Junior Ranger in several of the State Parks and National Parks around the country. We had a lot of fun doing the activities in the Yellowstone Junior Ranger booklet, and having “Yellowstone Junior Ranger” added to Ryan’s list of life accomplishments…
We LOVED our time in Yellowstone, and hope that the amount of time between this trip and our next trip is considerably shorter than from our last visit to this one. It is a beautiful area, and we hope to be back soon.