Yellowstone Adventure [Part 5 of 6]
Our last day at Yellowstone National Park, we drove along its northern boundary, passing through Lamar Valley and out the Northeast Entrance. It seemed we had all sorts of weather at some point during the day, with sun, rain, snow, wind, and lightning at a particularly intimidating moment.
Before we re-entered the park once more, I photographed Montana's so-called "Big Sky". Probably didn't catch it on its best day.
This is Undine Falls, which I keep reading as "Undie Falls".
And some wildlife...
Here are a bunch of dead trees, and one petrified one.
The majestic Tower Fall.
And some wide-open scenes, many of which are peppered with buffalo.
More scenes as we made our way out of the park...
At one of the pullouts, people had seen a far-off grizzly bear, but I couldn't manage any better view than a speck, even with 12x optical zoom. But right before we exited the park, I hung my camera out the car window and caught this fellow:
Also this peregrine falcon.
Weather, which had been chilly all day, threatened to pour down on us. Some mountains had fresh dustings of snow. But we took the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway up and over the unoffensively-named Dead Indian Pass.
Coming down the other side, we made our way to Cody, Wyoming, where we stopped in for a Chinese buffet and the rain caught up with us.
An hour and a half later, we reached the town of Thermopolis, home of the world's largest mineral hot spring. Now check out this metal bridge. We really wanted to see whatever was on the other side, but there was lightning. We hurried across anyway, the whole thing shaking underneath us as we went. Yes, the bank looks interesting, but oh-what is that? Hanging from the cliff were hundreds of... BATS. It was like some kind of super-fear experiment: bridges, electricity, bats... wanna throw in some snakes while you're at it? Maybe a T-Rex?
Coming up next time: the final chapter of our vacation!