A Trip to Seattle- The Long Way

This last week Lynne, Rachel, Heather and I went to visit Angela in Seattle. Richie had a soccer tournament so he stayed home. We decided since Rachel and Heather have not seen Yellowstone we would go North to the big park and then head west to Angela's house. This took us a little off course but was worth it to see the girls enjoy the wonders of Yellowstone. Lynne and I visited once before in search of bear and wolves. Much to our disappointment we did not see these majestic animals. So we stopped off in West Yellowstone and visited the animal preserve and spent some time with a few grizzly bears and four magnificent wolves. Despite my fear of a grizzly encounter gone bad I have an intense grizzly curiosity.

Heather and Rachel are waiting for Lynne and I. They are excited to see the animals. Especially Heather, I had to pull her away from exhibits.

My animal images were hard to get because they all wanted to sleep. I don't blame them we stopped by in the heat of the day and a short nap in the shade would have been nice.

We got lucky when one of the males woke up for a minute and decided to check out the visitors. He quickly laid back down and resumed his nap. When I was a young boy I became interested in wolves after I read the book Call of the Wild. I love that book.

The girls watched the bear while I ran around and took images. For the most part the bears ignored our presence and was busy eating grass and other plants. It was interesting to see him turn over rocks with his nose and eat insects and roots.

These bears were caught in the wild and brought to the sanctuary because they became a little to friendly with humans. This bear finally glanced over and our eyes met for a short time. Then he went back to the business of looking for food.

On one of the few occasions he looked over at me and gave me the face of DEATH. You know the one I see in my nightmares. Wow these animals can destroy us in an instance if they desire. Luckily we are not regularly on the menu.

With my zoom lens I was able to get uncomfortably close to the bear. It is almost like you can smell the rotten flesh from his last meal. The nice thing... bears eat a lot of plant matter. If you look close it is not flesh but plant material in his mouth. Most likely he still has bad breath.

After watching the animals in West Yellowstone we drove into the park and enjoyed some of the stinky geologic sites. I don't remember the name of this hot spring but it had many visitors and a strong sulfur aroma. Just west was the mud pots. I love the color contrast between the deep pool and the rust colored bacterial mats.

I was looking carefully at the bacterial mats and found a tiger beetle feeding. I could not verify what it was feeding on but saw a few some small flies landing on top of the water. I have images with the beetle placing its mandibles in the bacterial mat as though it was trying to catch something just under the mat. I thought this was a very interesting behavior and will share the information and images with my entomology professor at BYU.

Close by were some geysers that were a very consistent and beautiful displays of Earth's geologic activity. I was excited to show the girls these wonders. I don't think they were excited as me.

On the way to see Old Faithful Rachel took this image of an Elk. This animal was feeding next to the road brining the traffic to a stand still.
We are waiting for OLD FAITHFUL but no luck. We couldn't wait any longer so we split and went to the lower Yellowstone falls. We would have waited but it was a very long drive to Angela's house and we needed to get going. Next time we will plan to stay a little longer.
Lots of smoke from a fire in Calif. made the image hazy/ smoky. This is one of my favorite waterfalls. I think there are at least two other trails that allow you to see the falls from a different angle.
Look at these beauties !! There were a lot of people from distant lands here to see the falls. The girls really enjoyed the falls. If you have not seen the falls or the other wonders in Yellowstone National Park it would be worth your time to plan a trip.