Our first day in Yellowstone!  Gardiner is about 3 minutes away from the entrance to Yellowstone National Park.  Then you drive about another 10 minutes before you come into the old Fort Yellowstone and see your first thermal feature: Mammoth Hot Springs.  We hopped out immediately to go walk around and enjoy our first stop in Yellowstone.  Boy was it busy!

The lady who had welcomed us at our campground had recommended a couple places for us to go in the park to see wildlife, so we decided to drive to those areas.  There was a pretty little one-way drive on a dirt road that we took called the Blacktail Plateau Drive.  It was advertised as an area where a good bit of wildlife is often seen, but we saw none.

After taking the Blacktail Plateau Drive, we came upon a pullover for a petrified tree.  Since we had skipped going to Petrified Forest National Park, we really wanted to see the petrified tree.  We walked up to it and were able to admire it, but it was encircled by a tall wrought iron fence, so we weren’t able to actually touch it and see what petrified wood felt like.

As we drove down the eastern side of Yellowstone, we kept our eyes peeled for wildlife.  This side of the park doesn’t have very many thermal features, especially when compared to the western side of the park.  But that was ok, because we wanted to see wildlife.  As we drove along, we saw the nest of a bald eagle with the eagle flying to and from the nest.  I was so grateful that Charlie had given me a great pair of binoculars for Christmas.  They really enabled us to get a good look at the nest and the eagle.

After the eagle, we came upon our first pronghorn antelope.  And even better, it was a mother pronghorn nursing two babies!  The kids were all asking questions about how it was related to a deer and such, so we did a little looking up.  We discovered that pronghorn aren’t actually antelope at all and aren’t part of the deer family.  They are actually the last remaining member of the Antilocapridae family, and its closest remaining relative is the giraffe!  When you can see their faces well, we all could see the resemblance between the pronghorn and the giraffe.

Driving down the western side of the park, you can take a road off the main loop to go towards the northeast entrance of the park.  When we drove into the Lamar Valley, we saw bison everywhere – HUGE herds!  We stopped and watched them for a little while and were treated to seeing them stampede.  They were quite far from the road, so Charlie was watching them through the binoculars and able to see that they were spooked by a plastic bag flying around.  They ran and ran and ran away from this plastic bag.  It was quite funny but also amazing to see such beautiful, powerful symbols of the American West stampeding.  What a privilege!

We continued driving and went out the northeast gate into the small town of Silver Gate and then drove right back in (after stopping to get some ice cream!).  On our way back we were treated to yet another amazing wildlife first for us: we saw a black wolf.  He/she was by itself just traipsing across the side of a sagebrush-covered hill.  We wouldn’t have seen it at all if it hadn’t been for some very keen-eyed observers parked by the side of the road. 

We continued driving through the park and eventually made our way over to the western side and the Norris Geyser Basin.  This area was full of geothermal features, so we hiked around for quite a bit.  At the end, we found a ranger who asked if we had any questions just as we were getting ready to leave.  None of the kids spoke up, but I did.  She was full of information regarding the wildlife in the park, the volcano itself, the geothermal features, everything.  We talked to her for at least 30 minutes.  She made sure to tell us to be careful driving after dark because bison’s eyes don’t glow in the dark making them difficult to see when they are standing in the middle of the road. 

We drove around the park throughout the evening hoping to see some of the wildlife that like to come out around dusk like bears and wolves, but we weren’t so lucky.

After having no luck finding either animal, we decided that I would drive back to the campground as we were still more than an hour away from our campground, Charlie was exhausted, and his eyes aren’t great at night.  Fortunately, I was able to see the bison herd crossing the road, especially since there were plenty of red tail lights in front of us.

It was a long, exhausting day.  We were in Yellowstone by 10:00am and not back until after 10:00pm.  We were all completely worn out.

Rebecca