Birds + Water = Water Birds. Yellowstone, June 7-9, 2014

Vacation - finally.  One week for us, just Brent and me.  And about a quarter of the state of Wyoming with a tiny bit of Montana thrown in for good measure.

Yellowstone just happens to be one of our favorite spots on earth.  The fact that it's only a little over five hours away makes it all that more appealing.  We loaded the car with half the house, double checked our lists, and finally pointed the car north and let it take us there on Saturday, June 7, 2014.

We didn't know what we were going into this year.  Back in February a pipe burst in the condo, creating thousands of dollars worth of damage.  We knew the repair work was getting close, but still were not sure if it would even be habitable.  Earlier reservations had been cancelled because the place was simply not ready yet. All we knew was the water was back on, the kitchen was somewhat useable and the bedrooms upstairs had escaped unscathed.

When we arrived at the condo in West Yellowstone, we found a worker in the basement and long lengths of wood planks stretching from the livingroom to the kitchen floor.  We told him to carry on, and unloaded the car into the upstairs bedroom.  We would essentially live there most of the vacation - at least at night.  Daytimes were to be spent in the Park as much as possible, as well as mealtimes.

What happens with a unit that only has construction workers in it for five months?   Well, a couple of hours of scrubbing, cleaning toilets, vacuuming, mopping and dusting at least rescued the bedroom and bathroom we were going to use.   It didn't leave a lot of time to go exploring on Saturday, but as soon as we could justify it, we took off into the Park, making it up to the Madison Valley where we found Cinnamon Teal Ducks and a Blue Heron that captured our hearts.  At least it gave us a sweet taste of Yellowstone 2014, which we found to be brilliant green, lush, with water everywhere.  They had a good snow year in the winter of '14.  A very good year.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Yep - see that S-shaped neck when it flies?  Definitely Heron.

Sunday, June 8, 2014 - more birds

Sunday is our "day of rest."  We were definitely ready for it that day, and took it easy.  We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast and attended Church in West Yellowstone.  After a lunch of left over Kentucky Fried chicken, we took a drive into the park.  Didn't get very far.  Just past the Wyoming border in an area where we never see anything, I saw something.

Was it?
Yes!  Definitely an eagle.
And conveniently there was a parking lot right near it.
And nobody was watching it.
We had it to ourselves.

We pulled into the parking lot and started unloading our camera gear.  Brent was pulling out his tripod from the trunk of the car.  I was watching the Eagle, camera in hand.

When something amazing happened. 
This might not be amazing to you, but for me it was definitely that.
Another eagle flew up from the river below and perched on the same branch as the first.

And I was lucky enough to be watching with a camera loaded and ready to shoot.

 Well, it wasn't long before we were no longer alone.  Guys with big cameras showed up.  Well, the cameras weren't big, but the lenses definitely were.  But we had the good lens.   Our 400 prime is the one Brent mostly uses, but after I took a ton of images with my zoom 300, which has always been a favorite of mine but am now learning its limitations with wildlife (used above), talked Brent into letting me take a turn with the 400 (below):

 Suddenly I was able to get a much better shot on the two.   By then we were surrounded by people.  The parking lot was full.  The sides of the road were full.  And the birds were just sitting there.  So we moved on.

Actually, we returned to West Yellowstone, grabbed dinner in town and went back to the condo to try to go to bed early.  So we could get up at 3:30 in the morning.

Going to bed early never works for me.   I tossed and turned all night, sleeping fitfully, worried about falling asleep while driving the next day because I wasn't getting enough sleep that night, worried about the fog I knew would be collecting along the riverbeds becoming frozen on the roadway (it was dropping below freezing during the night), worried about hitting a buffalo or an elk or a bear in the dark of the night we were going to be driving through, worried about a ton of things that never happened (always the case), and didn't sleep.  Maybe I was a little bit excited, too.

But we did get up at 3:30.  I wasn't sleeping anyway. Each year we try to schedule one early morning in the park.  In the past we've gone on photo safari's.   They've been interesting and we've learned a lot from them, but at a certain point it's time to stop taking the tours and start creating your own.  So that's what our goal was for Monday morning.

Destination:  Hayden Valley at sunrise, with the hope it would be filled with fog like it was a couple of years ago when we headed to Lake for a safari.  We passed up impressive photo opportunities that morning two years ago because we didn't want to miss our tour, which turned out to be disappointing (except for the rainbow at the Falls, which I still think is one of my best photos of the Falls ever).  We have ever since kicked ourselves for not stopping and taking photos of the herd of elk emerging from the fog.  So we were, essentially, trying to recreate a scene that passed years ago.

One thing about photography:  You never recreate an opportunity. 

However, there are always new ones.

Monday, June 9, 2014

We found the valley enshrouded in fog, once again.  Cool!  It was dark.  It was cold.  There was frost on the sagebrush.  There were NO animals.

It was eerily quiet.

We drove through the fog, hoping to find something we could capture on camera.
Nothing.
We turned around and drove back.
There was that one lump out in the brush.  It appeared to be alive.
It was!
A cow elk was bedded down.
There was a possibility.  So we pulled into a pull out and quietly tried to focus in on her.  But she saw us.  She watched us.  She stood up and refused to be photographed.  She moved behind us and up the mountainside, disappearing silently into the fog.

We sat there and looked at each other in the warm cocoon of our car.  The fog was starting to get lighter.  We knew somewhere there was a sunrise, but all we had was the fog - which was good.  We wanted the fog.  We just didn't have the animals.

We were almost ready to drive on when I noticed up the side of the mountain a dark shape that was growing, turning from shadow to form to....

...buffalo.

Huff, huff.

Not just one buffalo, mind you.
An entire herd of them.
Materializing from the fog came the lumbering shadows, silently moving around the parked car like water being parted by a rock in the middle of a quiet river.  All we could hear was the soft thump thud of their hoofs against turf.  They moved as one without word.

The scruffs on their backs were white with frost.  This was June!  But we had moved back into late winter and early spring.  And though I would not have personally selected buffalo as a subject, that's what we were given and that's what we took.

As we were parked, watching the buffalo move onto the road so they could cross Alum Creek without getting their feet (hoofs) wet, we noticed a car coming from the opposite direction.  Oops.  Not going far, apparently.   The car slowed to a stop, and waited.

And we grabbed the photo opportunity, both Brent and I snapping away at the great silhouettes the headlights gave us.

A couple of buffalo decided to give us a brief show and started scuffling with each other (blurry shot):

 

We were there long enough (well, we were kind of stuck anyway - waiting on a herd of buffalo is time consuming), for the sun to start breaking through the fog.  Details were coming up.  Life was good.  The road was finally cleared, the herd moving back onto earth once they got past the water.  After all, they can't eat asphalt.

So we roamed Hayden Valley for a while.  We discovered there was an amazing number of people materializing out of the mists with their cameras as well.   Realistically, Yellowstone in summer is NOT the place to go if you don't like rubbing shoulders with other photo fanatics.

But we shared space.   And sometimes not.  No one else was after the shot I took below. Brent didn't even leave the car for it.  Not worth his time.

But I love this shot!  Yes, it is dark.  Of course it is.  The Valley was still covered with fog.  But the geese were everywhere and I loved the layers of background just hinted at.

 We went south again, and stopped at a turn out where we've observed animals in the past.  It was still too foggy, but we were up just high enough that the sun was starting to break through and turned the fog golden in color. 

 Brent decided this was worth his time.

Finally, the sun was up.  The fog was gone.  And the valleys were enthralling.  This is why we get up at 3:30 and drive through the black of night and bleary eyes to find a location where the light may or may not be perfect, but will always bring something unexpected.

At the above location we were shooting the birds in the water and suddenly two Canadian geese were flying straight at us!  That was a rush.  I snapped continuous.  I was so excited!  Oh, these were going to be such great shots!

Later I found them way overexposed, way blurry, way wrong! wrong! wrong! 

 It is kind of cool, though, in an abstract way.  (Brent's shots of this are amazing, but he's kind of protective and doesn't like his stuff posted out on the Internet - though I did tell him I was posting the photos he took of me because for some strange reason I did not get any photos of myself.  Actually, I don't know if he knows how amazing his photos are because he's only looked at his jpgs.  I, on the other hand, have processed some of his shots, and with his 400, oh they are so amazing!  Trust me.   One of these days I'll try to talk him into letting me share them.)

Ok, the following photos show the differences in post processing.  They are different scenes, but I've been doing more learning about Photoshop and have enjoyed changing scenes a little.  So here, basically, is a deep blue, almost purple hue in this shot looking south along the Yellowstone River.  This is below the LeHardy Rapids.  Remember the difference when you scroll down and see the shot I got there, and remember it's not even a quarter of a mile from this scene.  I have never seen the river this glass smooth - ever.   So I squealed and made Brent find a place to park the car so we could go take pictures of a river.  Not Brent's favorite subject, but he was tolerant and complying, and we spent a few minutes here just loving the beauty of this nature:

Anyway, above the blues are almost purple.  Below, I made a few adjustments and they are almost an unnatural aqua hue - but aqua gets its name from water.  It is the color of water, and taken away from the comparison of the photo above, it looks a lot brighter and looks natural.   It is only when side by side to the one above that it starts to look too aqua.

The above photo is my personal favorite of the ones I took in this location.

Below is a photo I was ready to delete.  But cropped and adjusted slightly, I am very grateful I held onto it as well.   Not that I'm ever going to do much with any of these, but maybe I can make a calendar ...hahaha.  At least they are good memories, right?

 See, Brent did get out of the car and even took some here.

Next stop was, as I mentioned, the LeHardy Rapids.  We love this location because this is where the Harlequin Ducks come to nest.  In years past.  Not this year, though.

Hiking down to the rapids, we saw this little brook tumbling down the mountainside to add it's water to the river.  "Give said the little stream...."

And the willows were in bloom:

It was beautiful.
The water, however, was raging.   Really raging.   Yes, this is the same river as the above photos.  The difference a few rocks can make:

 There were no rock surfaces for the ducks this year.  The rush of water was violently turbulent and left no room for water fowl as it crashed it's way through the nesting grounds.

We did get breakfast that morning at the Lake Restaurant.  After breakfast we drove around the lake to the overlook where we parked the car and took a nap.  Brent continued to look for a bear, hoping for a similar encounter with a grizzly to the one we had last year, but there was no sign this year.  No bear watchers scanning the hillsides with their power scopes, no other drivers cruising along as slowly as we.  So we made our way back up Hayden Valley, up over Dunraven Pass and into Lamar Valley where we had just missed the action, apparently.  When all the scopes are being loaded into the cars and you can find parking spaces, you get the hint.

We had lunch at Roosevelt.  I always love their barbecue beef sandwiches.  Then we drove the upper circle past Mammoth, Swan Lake, waiting at the road construction, and then on back to West Yellowstone.   We were ready to retire early again, and this time I slept.  Tuesday we had other plans.  More photos coming.   :)