On our return trip from South Dakota we were able to spend a couple of hours in Yellowstone National Park. It brought back such sweet memories of when my husband and I were going to college in Bozeman and we would spend any spare time camping and hiking around in the park with our three oldest when they were little guys. It was simply wonderful. Now we were experiencing it with all our kids, what an amazing place.
Bighorn babies…
Mammoth Terrace…
Would it be a visit to YNP without seeing elk in Mammoth?
Emma and her daddy.
Bison raising a bit of dust.
With his namesake!
Cow elk, grazing.
A nice sized bull elk.
Bighorn Sheep.
A tired little boy.
Grizzly Bear.
We had decided to stop at a spot to walk through and look at some of the geothermal areas with the kids. We had thought this spot would be a bit safer than others in respect to worrying about one of our littles falling into something until we spotted the guy above. At first all we could see was a group of people gathered around and a bit of brown fuzz moving. We thought it must be a bison with as close as people were and then we saw that it is was a Grizzly! Whoa!! It’s not smart to be around a bison that close let alone a bear. Luckily the guy decided to run off into the trees, towards the trail we were going to go on. We decided our hike would have to be postponed until our next trip through. Their were people dumb enough to go running down the trail to get a better look at the bear, some of them with little kids even. Yikes. It was still pretty neat to get a quick glimpse of the guy though.
To top it all off, on our way out we were able to stop and listen to this guy bugle back and forth with another bull. ALWAYS extremely neat!
Just the couple of hours we spent zooming through the park made us decide we will have to return this next year with tents and all the gear to spend more time in this little spot of heaven.
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Bull bison flehming….
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