Full Day at West Yellowstone

We were awakened by serenading crows yesterday morning with their loud KAW! KAW's!!:

 

It was time to get up anyway, so we had breakfast and got ready to go to Yellowstone for the day. We left at about 9:30 and, of course, it was raining. This would be the first full day we have had this year to explore the park. There was one major road closed for construction which altered our plan somewhat, but there is always enough of the park to see regardless of road closures. It didn't take very long before we spotted our first wildlife - a couple elk grazing near the entrance:

There was a side road that we had never taken before that led to what is called the Virginia Cascades:

The road leading to these falls is a one way, narrow road that drops sharply over the edge to the bottom of a small canyon - scary, and not a favorite of Josie's.

There is lots of snow remaining in some areas:

and we believe that the weather has impacted the wildlife movement within the park. We drove to the Canyon Junction and took the turnoff to the Upper and Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone:

We first viewed the Lower Falls:

and the beautiful canyon created by the Falls and the river:

We then drove to the South side of the Canyon and viewed the Upper Falls, which is not nearly as spectacular:

Our drive was detoured by the road closure and we returned over the same route we took coming into the park. We came across this huge bull bison along the road before exiting the park at around 2 PM:

Our campground is affiliated with the IMAX theatre next door and we had free passes (a $17 value) to see the shows that were running all day, every day. There were 3 different shows to choose from and we chose the show about the Lewis and Clark expedition and we were not disappointed. The IMAX format puts you right there when they do fly-overs of the areas that the expedition traveled.

Today is the day we arrive in Jackson to begin our (2nd) four month summer stay at the Virginian Lodge. We are looking forward to seeing everybody again from last year and spending more quality time in one of our favorite locations in America...