Yellowstone, Northern Route

We set a time to leave yesterday of no later than 8:30 AM to go to Yellowstone by taking the northern route. This involved taking the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway out of Cody and through a small portion of Montana before entering Yellowstone at the Northeastern Entrance. This is a beautiful trip in itself and represented some of the most scenic travel anywhere in the country. We took a total of 130 pictures yesterday and many of those were along this highway. I included a couple of those below, starting with the picture from the Dead Indian Summit at 8080 feet:

Also at the top, we found this chipmunk that was playing just over the rail:

We reached the Northeast Entrance to Yellowstone and it wasn't long before we spotted some antelope in the fields. We got a good shot of this one:

There is a long valley of open range called the Lamar Valley, and there were buffalo everywhere. There were several herds scattered about the valley and we got some good pictures, one of which is below:

Continuing on to the northern loop on the Grand Loop, we took a turnoff to see a petrified tree. What in the world would a petrified tree be doing in this part of the country? If you read the information in the link, you will be surprised, as we were, to discover that Yellowstone has more petrified trees than any other site in the country:

Further on, we stopped at another location that offered a half mile walk to view the Wraith Falls:

Was the one mile round trip walk worth it? We thought so.

When we arrived at the first turn southward on the upper loop road, we came to Mammoth Hot Springs. Here, there are many different walkways that take you around the unusual effects of the thermals that are common in Yellowstone. There are also places where Yellowstone employees have housing, and we couldn't ignore taking a shot of this grassy lawn area outside one of these residences:

Yes, there were probably 15 or so elk just grazing and lying in the grass.

We took several shots of the thermals in this area, two of which are below:

They really are fascinating.

The crowning event of the day was spotting our first bear in Yellowstone. Once again, we came upon a huge traffic jam and saw people pulling off the road and running with their cameras to a location at the edge of the forest where we saw this:

He was just calmly walking along, stopping to graze a little bit, and then continued on his way.

The day was another long, enjoyable day off. We think that we will only ask to work 4 days on jobs in areas like this so we can spend more time seeing the beautiful sights. We will again go back to Yellowstone - at least on our way to the Tetons and Jackson. We could never get tired of going back to this place.

Today starts another work week for us - sigh. Josie is doing laundry and then it's time to get ready. These last 2 days went like lightening...