On the drive into the park, the winding road cuts through a dense forest, packed tightly with trees, some alive and vibrant, others dead with burn marks. Because the sad reality is, our national parks are dying. Forest fires have ravaged the ecosystem, destroying nearly everything. It's part of the life of the forest, I suppose. It's since picked up and grown more and more. :)
The trees just... stop. At once. Sweeping into a grassland full of all sorts o' critters! We saw our first buffalo of the trip, a lone male milling by the edge of the woods. (and took about a million pictures...) Reluctantly, we moved on, and then realized... buffalo are everywhere! We saw herds of thousands roaming, and even caught a glimpse of the deer and the antelope playing! ;)
There were several calves in the herds we encountered, and they were ADORABLE! *squeals* Just like little orange cattle~
The antelope mixed and mingled with the buffalos like the good friends they are. They were so common throughout the entire trip, I didn't even snap one photo of 'em...
We also ran into quite a few waterfalls (like ze photo below). Sadly, those were the only times I actually remembered to take pics. xD I was too engrossed with Yellowstone, I tell ya!
In addition to the waterfalls,it was HOT SPRINGS GALORE! Seriously. So. Many. Hot. Springs. Such a pleasant oder, though. Ah, sulfur~
On day two of our Yellowstone adventure, we saw a moose couple! To be young and in love...
And then, and then, and then... we saw the PETRIFIED WOOD! Which is about as exciting as it sounds... The really cool part about it, though, was the "tour guide". The little fox would walk up the trail a ways, wait for us to catch up, then walk a little farther, untill we reached the rock. It waited beside it until we were done, then lead us back down to our car. It was super cool!
So we're driving along, gawking at all the buffalo, thinking, "oh my gosh, many buffalo are there?!", and listening to my mum talk about how "all she wants to see is a bear". And by golly - we do! A mama black bear, to be precise. She got within 300 yards of us, then the park ranger said, "yo dogs, get in yo car. Dat bear gonna eat chu." (or something like that) So we did. A few hundred yards down from Mother Bear, was what all these slickers were a callin' "a wolf!!" They cried wolf. We believed them. 'Til we saw it. It was a COYOTE, PEOPLE! -_-" (we can pretend it was a wolf, I suppose, because one does not simply go to Yellowstone and exclaim about the coyote one saw, after all)
You see, my mother became "bear drunk", as I shall lovingly refer to it. Now she wanted to see a GRIZZLY bear. (we saw another black bear later on) She was ready for the big guns. Lo and behold, we saw one! Well, according to Mr. Park Ranger (who looked fairly educated on the matter), it was a Cinnamon Black Bear. So. It. Looked. Like. A. Grizzly. But it teases... :p Still coolio, though!
I was able to see the glorious blue springs Yellowstone is famous for, and heavens... photos can't do it justice. It was the most amazing shade of blue I'd ever seen.
And oh yeah, OLD FAITHFUL.
...
Not so grand, if I do say so myself. I was expecting so much more... But alas, I shall have to bear with it!
All in all, a great two days! I recommend visting Yellowstone if you're ever in the area. And DEFINETLY split it into two days. There's so much to cover!
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