We love America’s national parks, but Yellowstone is probably our favorite. Our first visit was a year after we married in 1975. For that trip we camped at Pebble Creek in a little pup tent and were able to spend only one day in the park. This year we were blessed to visit Yellowstone for the 8th time, and it was our first visit in early spring. We arrived on May 2, before some of the park roads were open. Nevertheless, the weather, scenery, and wildlife watching were excellent! Rather than roughing it in a tent, we stayed in a cabin at Mammoth Hot Springs. After checking in and unloading the car, we took the road from Mammoth towards Roosevelt to see what we could before sundown. Here are a few of our photos:
Shortly after leaving Mammoth we found our first wildlife: a small herd of bison crossing the road. The herd included maybe a couple dozen adults and a few recently-born “red dog” calves. This would be the first of hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of bison we would see during our almost week long visit to the park.Shortly after making our way past the bison, we spotted our first two bears of the trip. This mother grizzly and her cub were grazing on a hillside above the road. The sow was intent on foraging, but the cub looked up several times to check out the bear jam developing on the road below. I think the cub has a case of underbite, since the lower teeth kind of stuck out in almost every photo I shot.The mother grizzly looks rather well off for having come out of hibernation only a few weeks earlier. Not exactly a glossy coat, but not shaggy, either. For that matter, the cub was larger than we expected, but apparently they grow really quickly at this point in their life. After viewing the two grizzly bears we drove on towards Roosevelt. We found this herd of female elk was grazing a bit off the road, with a few bison further on in the distance. This photo also shows one of the challenges of photographing this big, sprawling scenery. God designed our eyes, mind, and imagination to take it in, up to a point, but it is hard to do it justice with a photograph.We were heading back to Mammoth towards sunset when we found our third bear of the evening. This black bear crossed the road in front of our car, casting a bit of a shadow in our headlights. It was a little tricky shooting through the windshield, but the lighting and focus worked out reasonably well. We kept our distance, and the bear took his time getting to the other side.
