Early Morning in Hayden Valley, Yellowstone

We left camp at 5:30 on July 23rd to head toward Hayden Valley in hope of hearing/seeing wolves. We decided not to stop along the way, but soon the spectacular beauty caused us to change that decision.  As dawn spread over the steamy hot springs along the highway east of North Basin geysers, the eastern sunrise was too beautiful to ignore.  As we climbed out of our car, we also noted the full moon setting in the west at the same time:

Earlier, in the breaking dawn light, we saw an elk herd grazing by the Madison River just a few miles east from the park entrance:

 

 

Further down the road, we pulled off to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, spectacular in the early morning light with hardly anyone else around.

 

A small snow cornice still hangs above the river--it was 30 degrees here this morning!

 



A little scamp of a chipmunk was our only other companion at the first pulloff:

We continued to travel south, and soon began to encounter the ubiquitous bison.  One older bull bison travelled down the center of the oncoming lane, stopping all traffic behind him, as he slowly marched up the road, totally oblivious to a string of cars behind him. He passed by our stopped car within four feet, and was snorting with every other step.  We drove on, seeing several bulls along the highway, and finally, a large herd blocked the road and extended on both sides up to the hill tops:

We stopped whenever we saw cars pulled over, and usually thought they were watching distant bison, but one woman came over to us just as we almost left and asked if we had spotted the grizzly.  We
had not, but thanks to her, we did.  He was far away, moving quickly, and my telephoto caught him, but only just:

Two other times we stopped for supposedly grizzly sightings, all very distant.  When I zoomed in on one of those "sightings" later on my laptop, it was a distant bison.  The grizzly tends to move much more rapidly than the bison, and we watched the one pictured above emerge from a group of trees and quickly zig-zag his way up the hill until he disappeared.  I could tell at the time that his shape was definitely not that of a bison, and his movements were very rapid.

Further down the road, we breakfasted on eggs benedict at the Yellowstone Lake Lodge, which had a beautiful overlook of this large mountain lake:

We had given up hope of seeing a moose, but I was looking for a strong cell signal when we came up to the west Thumb Geyser area, and suddenly, there they were--two moose cows at the entrance to the West Thumb Geyser area, blocking all of the traffic in both directions.  It wasn't easy to catch them with the camera, as they were upset by the traffic, and walking off quickly, trying to avoid tourists snapping their picture.  One of the cows was calling her high pitched whistle, obviously distressed by all of the hubbub, but still beautiful, although this second view of her showing her moose withers and roman nose is from the rear.

Tomorrow we head out toward Butte Montana. We tried to extend our stay here, but I would have to hitch-up and move to another spot, and I would just as soon move on, then.