Day at Yellowstone

It was our designated day to visit Yellowstone yesterday. We tried to get an early start but didn't get on the road until after 8 AM. The one thing that has been noticeable the entire visit this year is the extreme amount of traffic and visitors to the parks this year. It took us 15 minutes to get through the line at the South Entrance to Yellowstone which is a first. We never had to wait more than a few minutes on a busy day. We have heard on the news where there are record crowds this year, and we saw them first hand yesterday.

Our very good friends, Scott and Valerie Anderson, are working again at the Bridge Bay Marina and store located in Yellowstone north of the South Entrance. We stopped to pay them another visit - as we did last summer - and spent about an hour visiting with these nice folks at their fifth wheel before they had to go into work:

They have indicated that this is probably the final year they will be working in Yellowstone. They work each winter at Amazon.com - where we first met them six years ago - and the grind of the east-west travel is beginning to take a toll on them. They are good friends and we will always stay in touch.

Our hope yesterday was that we would see some wildlife. Our first encounter was with bison that were relaxing in a huge field:

Josie made the comment that it would be nice if we could get closer to these animals to get some better pictures. Sure enough, about a half mile down the road we ran into this bunch that were all over the road and very close to the vehicles - including ours:

That's about as close you ever want to get.

The crowds were unbelievable as we tried to drive through areas that we previously have been successful in seeing wildlife. There was no way that any wildlife would be close to this kind of human traffic:

It became obvious to us that any chance of seeing anything other than more bison was slim and none so we decided to bag the rest of the drive through Yellowstone and head for the West Entrance to drive back to Jackson through Idaho. That is a trip that we like anyway, so it was no big deal. It made for a really nice day though as we stopped and had a picnic lunch on the way out.

Our day ended back at Jackson at around 6 PM and we went to one of our favorite restaurants in Jackson - El Abuelito - where we had a great Mexican dinner to end the day:

It's cloudy and cool this morning and thunderstorms are in the forecast. We want to take a walk through one of our favorite locations - Schwabacher Landing - in the Park, so we will try to get that done this morning. Then, we will go to the Fair and see how our entries fared in the judging. Our fingers are crossed...