Day Eight: Buffalo Bill, Yogi Bear,and Bambi, Oh My!

Today was a long and somewhat tedious day of driving and stopping and driving and stopping as my Dad and I traveled through two major national parks, Grand Teton and Yellowstone. However, it was definitely worth it after everything we saw there! Grand Teton definitely had one of the prettiest sceneries so far. I mean, look at the picture that my Dad took below. It's perfectly picturesque and he did a great job of capturing the true beauty we witnessed this morning.

One of the most surprising sights in Grand Teton was that the mountains still had snow on them! Although, it did make some sense as we were up 8,000+ feet and the mountains themselves were 12-13,000 feet, which is pretty darn high! Plus, the weather was a bit cooler today, especiallycompared to the 100+ degree temperatures I've become accustomed to over the past week. It was cloudy for most of the day as well, but we were very fortunate that the rain held off until we were leaving the Yellowstone. Thank goodness for a little luck of the Irish for us Shannons!
After our beautiful drive through Grand Teton, we entered Yellowstone. As most of you know, the major attraction there is the Old Faithful Geyser. To be honest, I wasn't that excited to see it, especially if it meant having to sit there and wait for an hour or more for it to erupt. The park is so big and there are so many other things we could see in an hour that would probably be better than hot water shooting up out of the ground, no offense to the Old Faithful faithful. In another stroke of Irish luck, we arrived at the geyser and only had to wait about 15 minutes before she blew! I'll admit it was cool and I was glad that I got to see the sight that everyone always talks about when referring to Yellowstone, but I was also very glad we didn't waste much time seeing it as that allowed us to see some of the unique wildlife roaming Yellowstone. We saw many signs warning us that animals were in the area and to stay in our car or on the roadside when viewing them in their natural habitats and jokingly took pictures of them because we figured most of the warnings were common sense and therefore amusing. Obviously, if there are bears or bison nearby, we aren't going to go try to pet them. We're perfectly happy to watch them from hundreds of feet away and/or the safety of our vehicle! However, while the signs usually warned against visitors approaching the animals, they never did give us any instructions as to what to do if an animal approached us. I guess park rangers and sign makers must assume that people might not have enough common sense to stay away from wild animals, but believe that we are smart enough to run or hide in our cars when a bear or bison starts charging towards us and therefore saw no reason to print signs exclaiming "Run for your life!" or "Hope your car is as strong as the bison around here!" for those situations. Well, luckily we were the latter park visitors and stayed in our car when Buffalo Bill here decided to cross the highway in front of my car!

Here's the story...We had initially pulled off to the side of the road when we saw a small herd roaming the field on our right side. We were snapping pictures and watching them, amazed at how close we were able to get to these huge and rare wild animals. It's not every day you see a buffalo, except maybe at the zoo, but seeing it in a natural environment was awesome! Just when we thought we'd seen enough and were ready to leave, we watched one of the buffalo walk along the fence towards the road. We thought we'd get a few more great shots with him at the edge of the fence parallel to the road when we then saw him walk right thru a missing section of the fence and right towards the car! We were shocked, excited, and a little frightened as you can imagine, despite still being within the protective barrier of the car. This stretch of highway has very light car traffic and we watched as he made his way to the asphault and mosied on across to the other side and then through another missing section of the fence in the field on the left. We figure the rangers must have done that knowing that the bison liked to graze back and forth between the fields on this stretch of the highway. The bison seemed to know right where he was going and didn't really give us a second look as he walked on by our car, which gave us the opportunity to get some amazing close up shots of one of the largest mammals in the world. It was incredible!

Below is a photograph taken of a different bison later on in Yellowstone. He was just hanging out on the hill, basically posing for all the amazed passer-by, and far enough away from the road that we felt somewhat safe enough to momentarily get out of the car and snap a few quick shots of him. Luckily, he was unfazed by all the attention and barely moved a muscle while we were there!

The other 2 animals I really wanted to see while in Yellowstone were bears and moose since I didn't know when I'd have another chance to see them in the wild. We had made it through most of the park without seeing either when we saw a traffic jam up ahead with people jumping out of their cars and running across the street to see something on the hill to our left. We couldn't see anything from the road and I was driving at the time so I sent my Dad to check it out. He joked later that he couldn't believe I'd sent him out there without knowing whether or not a bear or bison was going to come charging at the crowd of people, but I dismissed it telling him I knew he'd be fine all along. Well, I think I was just lucky yet again as it was indeed a bear off in the distance that everyone was awe-struck over. Since the traffic was stopped anyway, after my dad got a few pictures, he and I switched places so I could grab a few quick pictures of the bear as well. The one below was our best one and I couldn't be happier. We never did see a moose, which would have been the definite highlight of the day, but I'm very happy with our bison friend and the bear, especially since I've never seen either before except perhaps at the zoo.

However, just because we didn't see a moose doesn't mean that our wildlife sightings ended with bison and bears. As the blog title hinted at, we also were able to catch a very close glimpse of a pair of deer enjoying a clearly scrumptious and quiet (though probably not romantic as it appeared to be two male deer) dinner of grass and yellow flowers, a deer delicacy I'm sure.
We also saw some Pronghorns in Grand Teton, which surprisingly were actually grazing in the same field as the bison that crossed the road in front of our car. I'd never heard of them before, so I looked them up and learned that they are a type of antelope. They looked a lot like deer, but had inwardly rounded horns/small antlers that looked like big ears, hence their name, I would imagine. We never got up close and personal with them, but they were still a unique and different animal that I'd never seen before, so they fit in with the theme of today's drive.The last animal we saw today in Yellowstone was elk. We saw them just off the two lane road during a smaller traffic jam of on-lookers. Dad was driving, so I was able to hop out of the car and get extremely close, yet at a safe distance as well, in order to get a few great shots, including the best one below. They didn't look much different from deer from afar, but up close, wow, are they big animals. There were several grazing together and at one point they all perked up at something and raised their heads and I immediately turned and ran back up to the road and the safety of my father and the car! I don't think I was ever in any danger as they appeared to be herbivores, but you never know how these animals might react to an intrusion of their territory and as we discussed previously, I am definitely one of those people with enough common sense to run first and turn back when I'm in the car to see if they actually were chasing me or not!

All in all, it was a pretty great day! But it was a very long day of driving. I thought that since we stayed in Jackson last night, today would be easy since we were only 30 minutes away from Grand Teton. But it ended up taking us around 2 hours to drive thru there b/c of the slower two-lane roads and the random stops along the side of the road to take pictures of the tetons and roaming bison. Plus, I think my dad and I both underestimated how big Yellowstone really is. We only ended up doing half the park, which was plenty as we were able to see the major sights and plenty of wildlife on our drive, but we didn't make it to our end destination for the day of Cody, Wyoming until after 8pm. And we started the day with breakfast at 9am, so it was a pretty long day with quite a bit of driving despite the frequent sightseeing pit stops along the way.

Cody is an interesting little rodeo and cowboy town, which sort of epitomizes the imagery on Wyoming license plates.

My dad found an interesting hotel for the night with a little history called the Irma, which claims to be Buffalo Bill's original hotel back in the 1800's. We didn't get one of the historic rooms like he had hoped, but it definitely had more character than the Days Inns and other cheap hotels I've been staying at thus far. It's been an experience and I'm glad we did it for a night, but I'll be glad to get back to the regular familiar hotel routine tomorrow!Comfort Inn, here we come! Oh, yeah! Nothing but the best...I mean, cheapest and/or only hotel available for me! That's how I roll!

Tomorrow is more driving. We are going to see how the morning/afternoon goes and depending on when we get to Rapid City, South Dakota, we might try to go to Mount Rushmore in the late afternoon in order to view it both in daylight and while it's lit up at night, which we believe they do. Otherwise, we'll just have a much needed quiet evening at the hotel, maybe go to bed early, and then see Mount Rushmore the following morning. We'll just have to see how the day goes. Until next time...