A is for ...

AFTER Heather joined us in Yellowstone...

The vacation was really starting to wind down for us.
We felt like we had pretty much exhausted all the haunts we wanted to see.
But Heather arrived Thursday afternoon, and came in like a breath of fresh air,
breathing back life into our Yellowstone trip.

A is for A wonderful way for Heather to start her vacation with us:
Thursday night we went to dinner and then caught Beauty and the Beast at the Playmill Theater in West Yellowstone.

David Walker gave an award winning performance of the beast - fantastic voice, great acting!

(These three images were blatantly copied from the Playmill Theater website and will probably have me thrown in jail for copyright infringement, but hey - I bought the playbill, and I'm giving free publicity, right?)






We loved the production and were very impressed with the cast.

The next morning (Friday, the 31st) found us winding our way back into the park.  First stop, a photo op to once again catch ...
ANOTHER PHOTO OF THE EAGLE ON THE MADISON
The story behind this photo is that Brent the entire trip was set on finding an Eagle for Heather to photograph so she could replace the photos she took several years ago.

Why did she need to replace them?  you ask.
Simple.
I was going through the photos on the tiny review screen on our old camera and saw all these power poles so I deleted them without realizing the tiny spot on the end of the old branches (NOT power poles) were the photos of the eagle Heather had taken.

So first stop on Friday, were photos of  the Eagle.  She got the long lens.  The photo above is not the photo she took.  We downloaded hers onto her computer.  So you'll have to look at her Facebook page to see her pictures, and for the life of me I am not sure why I'm posting this picture here, because it is not Heather's and you've already seen my birds from the previous days, right?   But nonetheless, there is the bird again, with blue skies even.

So after that little stop, we headed up to Hayden Valley where Heather's sharp eyes saw....

(Yes, it was that cold. Heather and I were freezing even with our winter coats on)

ANOTHER BLUE HERON ...

 Yes, I know I've already posted one.   But this was the first one Heather spied on the trip, so we stopped and took photos.  While doing that we noticed people photographing up the road a bit.  When we drove up there, we saw what they were looking at ....

ANOTHER BUFFALO, you say?
Yeah, I know, from that distance it's an easy mistake to make.  But it is really  ...
ANOTHER GRIZZLY returning up the mountain after spending some time down on the river.  Oh, yeah, this, too, was the first bear Heather saw on the trip, so we all took pictures, even though ...

 ...it was so far away it was a teeny tiny speck on the mountainside.  Can you find it below?

 Well, that wasn't the grizzly we were trying to find, so we headed on down to Yellowstone Lake and back to the location we found the bear nearly a week earlier.

 On the way we found a few Pelican.  After photographing them for a while without much action, Brent asked if anyone wanted a turn using the 400 mm lens.  Heather declined so I was happy to trade lenses with him for a minute.  And just after I got the long lens on, this is what happened.  The big guy decided he was done wooing the females and decided to take off.  I caught about a dozen photos of him in various stages of his flight, and they all turned out clear and great and put a smile on my face.

So A is for A VERY LUCKY CAMERA OPPORTUNITY...  (yeah, I know I'm stretching the A thing)

We kept going back and forth along the lake shore, looking for signs of that sweet grizzly without success.    We did, however, have ANOTHER EAGLE fly overhead.  It was an AMAZING and  majestic site.  Couldn't get to the camera fast enough, though, so all I got was this photo of it flying away from us.

Brent and Heather looking over the lake shore below for signs of bear.

This red tail hawk watched us watching it on its perch near the shore.

 Finally, we gave up on the bear hunt and headed around the lake to Old Faithful.   She was over an hour away from the next eruption so we hung around inside the warmth of the Ranger's Station gift shop (without buying anything) until time to go watch it.  Did our obligatory watch and then headed on down the road.

Crow's Nest in the rafters of Old Faithful Inn.

 We came upon another buffalo jam on our way down towards Madison from Old Faithful.  Looked like the herd was on the move to greener pastures.   This was just one fragment of it.  I would guess there were at least 50 of the large animals lumbering up the road, bringing traffic to a complete standstill .... And

 bringing out the cameras for ANOTHER PHOTO OPPORTUNITY as all along the stoppage everyone started clicking  (see Heather's lens poking out of our back window from the rear view mirror).

 Here's another fragment of the herd moving on up the road, with frustrated motorists following behind.

 I know this next photo is not very sharp.  However, it does tell a story.  The cars behind the herd in the photo above started pushing through the stragglers bringing up the rear.  You can see the bus above right next to our car in this photo below.  The buffalo became trapped between the cars heading both direction, and there was no way to get away from them.   Not strange that the poor things should begin to panic.  Would you feel safe wedged between two rows of traffic yourself?   The scariest part was the bus, and that buffalo you see trying to guard its calf did panic.  She backed into the car in front of us, rocking it with the impact and leaving a big dent in the front quarter panel.

So we, at least in our car, learned a lesson that day.  When caught in a sea of buffalo passing you by like waves on the ocean, leave enough room between your car and the one in front for the buffalo to pass between you.   We did and a lot of them used that space to escape the trap, but the cars in front did not.

We ended our Park experience on Friday by taking Heather up the Firehole Drive to see the Falls.  The photo doesn't do it justice because there is no way for you to see just how large this waterfall was or how full it was with spring runoff.  

A is for A BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER.

Brent and Heather - photo by me

Me and Heather - photo by Brent

Brent and Me - photo by Heather

 

Taking one more picture...

We had a great day on Friday, but it was cold most of the morning, and we felt disappointed in the animal coverage we got.   Somehow we missed the memo on where to go to find the animals.  In all fairness, however, we have to remember that they don't like being out in the cold anymore than we do.  Saturday turned out to be much warmer with more sunshine and many great experiences.  I think I'll wait to post them, however, because it's really late and I can't keep my eyes open any longer.