Final Autumn Visit to Yellowstone

Yellowstone Autumn Visit
October 27, 2018

I set out with big hopes and dreams of seeing tons of animals and birds. After all, the last open weekend at Yellowstone would surely mean that the animals would be down out of the mountains and near the roads. Right?

Things started out well. Along the Madison river a couple of large groups of elk were grazing.

An osprey was flying high overhead in the same pullout as the Elk.

Bill had an art assignment to take photos of the colors of Yellowstone. This made us all more aware of what we were seeing.

Dunraven pass was surprisingly still open, so we routed up and over to Lamar valley where we finally found our elusive bison though not in the size of herds we saw here earlier in the summer. Our first mammal spotting since the Elk several hours earlier. However we did find Gray jays who were decidedly not going to let their pictures be taken along the road between Norris and Canyon.

In June the young bison is quite orange. Now we see him in his full dark winter coat.

Resting antelope

The day was mostly overcast and drizzly with an occasional flake of snow.

This bald eagle was quite a ways out but he posed in the tree for a very long time.

This moose was even farther out and we wouldn’t have spotted him if someone else hadn’t said there was something with four legs way out there. He’s standing in his own pond in the middle of the yellow grass surrounded by a sea of sage. Which is how we had to describe the location of this moose to everyone else who stopped to ask what we were looking at.