Tag: Yellowstone National Park

Before we went to Yellowstone I had only seen antelope in the wild, once, at a very great distance. That time was the kind of sighting where I mostly trusted DH’s declaration “Look! Antelope!” because they were tiny specks on the horizon far, far away. Antelope? Skinny cows? Darned if I could tell the difference.

No problems with these sightings. Antelope!

These antelope appeared over the crest of a hill as we drove by. A convenient pullout allowed us to watch as one, then a small herd came into view and eventually crossed the road in front of us.

These two critters were the highlight of my trip. Bighorn sheep. They were close enough that I saw the slit pupils in the eyes of the one on the right. I’m still excited.

I’ve been trying to see bighorn sheep for years. When we lived in California we went to Death Valley National Park about 20 times. Over the years we learned that bighorn sheep could sometimes be seen in Titus Canyon, a rough 27-mile journey that could take a good part of a day. We drove it numerous times, looking, and once missed a sighting by seconds. Our consolation prize was once seeing a coyote pounce onto its dinner. Cool, but no bighorn.

We saw other bighorn sheep twice in Yellowstone, on the high crest of a hill. They jumped across jumbles of rock outcroppings like gymnasts on parallel bars.

Tomorrow I’ll start showing you other sights at Yellowstone.

I’ll start showing you Yellowstone National Park where we started: with some of our incredible wildlife sightings. The Lamar Valley is reputed to be the best area for this and it did not disappoint, though we saw and learned of animals everywhere in the park. For us the one animal we saw the most of were bison, some of them as close as the road we traveled on. We saw them singly, in pairs, and in herds.

At one time bison nearly disappeared from Yellowstone. By the 1880s poachers had reduced bison numbers in Yellowstone to only 40. (National Park Service rangers weren’t actively managing parks until 1916.) Management programs brought the bison back and today there are about 5,000 in the park. This small herd was split across both sides of the road. Can you see the small reddish one in the distance to the left? A ranger called this a “red dog,” one of the newest members of the herd. Young ones have that reddish hue until darker, coarse fur grows in.

This was one of many wildlife traffic jams we encountered as one kind of animal or another walked either across the road or, in some cases, along with traffic.

Another animal we encountered soon after we arrived near Yellowstone was the local elk. We pulled into the parking lot of our first accommodations in Gardiner, Montana to find this elk cow and calf grazing on the landscaping. We saw lots of other elk throughout our trip, grazing. They’re particularly fond of the Mammoth Hot Springs Resort where there are lots of lawns and for the only time in my life I’ve had to watch my step to avoid elk droppings on the sidewalk.

Tomorrow I’ll show you other animals we visited in Yellowstone. Spoiler alert: No bears, wolves, or coyotes.