These are some more pictures taken on the 30 mile trip we took inside Yellowstone Park.
Just a few minutes after stopping to look at the little grizzly bear in the previous blog post LC yelled "wolf!"
I looked over to the left and saw this lone wolf only briefly before I lost sight of her.
LC grabbed the camera and took these pictures.
He said that she looked pregnant.
I could not tell that she was pregnant but in the very brief moments that I saw her I could tell that she was afraid.
What was a wolf doing this close to the road? This close to bison herds and a grizzly bear? To people?
What was she doing alone?
I was very happy to have seen her but something in me wished that I hadn't.
She was lost and scared and alone and too close to people all for an unknown reason that I knew could not be good.
She looked scared, moved scared, was scared.........
A mature buffalo scratching up against a wooden road sign along the side of the highway..........
While I saw large herds grazing in pastures in the distance on my side of the highway, LC saw a very large herd of adults and babies more active and roaming closer to the road, and he took these pictures..........
Heading back to the North East gate of the park...........
By this time shadows were getting longer, the sun was getting lower and it was still a very warm evening........
The one antelope we saw during our visit.
Antelope in my brief experience in the west have proven to be very skittish animals, but this lovely creature (as with all others we saw with the exception of the wolf) completely ignored both people and traffic.
Unperturbed by the crowds and the noise.........
A lot of the pictures that I took during this long and extended trip into the mountains the other day were too light for my liking.
I am sure there are settings on my camera that could adjust for different light levels but I don't care enough about it to check.
But by this time in the afternoon/evening the richness of the daylight brought out the richness and deep colors in the terrain around me.
These pictures were taken in a rush as we headed back towards the gate.
Time to get outta Dodge........
Even though I promised both myself and my Mountain Boy that I would not stop on the way home I finally had to break my promise.
As we were returning through the switchbacks from hell deep in the mountains I looked across the valley and realized that the sun was just beginning to fall into the horizon and that the light was so different it felt as though we were traveling this way for the very first time.
There was a haze and depth and settling of the light and terrain that I had to stop for.............
And one last stop.
This time at Dead Indian Pass again.
The light made everything look so different than it had been only..........well.........about ten hours before.
There was a depth and beauty and serenity to these mountains that I had not experienced before.
Not in April when the wind was gusting and it was freezing cold.
Not even just that same morning.
More beautiful than I am able to put into words, so I won't waste any more words..........
You can barely see them in the first picture but they are right there in the second one - an always watchful small herd of elk grazing in a pasture not far from the Belfry-Cody highway.
We were almost home.
It was a beautiful, wonderful, exciting and long day..........
One final picture of the overlook at Dead Indian Pass...........
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