We took a day while staying near Yellowstone and drove down to the Grand Teton National Park.  It’s just south of Yellowstone, and was a real pretty drive.  We drove down the east side of the mountain range and drove back up the west side, so we got photos from all different angles.  Here are two shots, first from the east and then from the west:

Here are more photos we took of this unique and beautiful mountain range:

We finally saw a grizzly, but it was in the local Resource Center which is like a zoo.  They have several grizzlies that were abandoned when babies or were considered “nuisance bears” (they like garbage too much and won’t stay away from populated areas).  They let them out of their cages into the big outdoor area two or three at a time throughout the day so they get some exercise and we can see them.  There were 3 out while we were there, two were siblings and played together a lot and the third just hung out laying around.  We got some great shots of them!

The Resource Center also has several wolves; because it was a cold day (around 38) they mostly laid in the sun and slept.  We got some good shots of one who sat up and then got up and walked around a little before curling up and going back to sleep.

The center also has eagles, of their 3 bald eagles one had a wing amputated after he was shot, and one had neurological damage and really acted strangely!  But, they are beautiful creatures!  They also have 2 golden eagles and a large owl.  The eagles and owl are in fairly small aviaries and it was sad to see they can’t really fly in that small space so they end up sitting on a branch all day.

Here are some pictures we took at the center:

Did you know that there is a huge canyon at Yellowstone that is called the “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone”?  We didn’t.  We visited it yesterday and it’s VERY impressive!  The Yellowstone River runs through it and has carved it over a long time.  There are two waterfalls at the beginning of the canyon and there are several viewpoints to see the beautiful formations and colors along the canyon.  Several of the viewpoints are down 800+ steps…and since we were at 8,000ft already Jeff and I decided not to attempt those.  We were out of breath just walking on level ground!

In the photo just below, notice the large white area on the cliff – it’s a shelf of snow!  At this altitude there was still some snow on the ground as well!

At one viewpoint a man was sitting with a large telephoto camera and was looking through it and then taking notes.  We discovered he was studying an Osprey in a nest high on the tip of a formation.  We got a fairly good photo of it with our telephoto lens and it’s included in the set of photos below.

We also saw a mud volcano and sulphur caldron – boy was it stinky!!!  The yellow coloring around several of the pits is pure sulphur.

And, while driving through a meadow we saw a couple of elk, both with nice antlers.  Got a couple of pictures of them.   We again saw lots of bison and at one place a ranger was directing traffic around a big male who was walking right in the middle of the street!  But, we have tons of bison photos so we didn’t hold up traffic this time 🙂

Here are some photos:

We took another trip into Yellowstone (we’re here for a month so we’ll be going into the park many times) and on this trip we saw even more geysers as well as Mammoth Hot Springs.  Mammoth Hot Springs is a weirdly beautiful place.  The formations look a lot like what we’ve seen in caves.  They were formed by hot springs up the side of a large hill that spewed out chemicals such as calcite that flowed down over the hillside, sometimes forming pools and then overflowing to form terraces.

We also saw a black bear – it was a ways down a hill so we didn’t have a close encounter but I have a couple of pictures of it.

We almost saw a grizzly too – we rounded a bend in the road and saw lots of people stopped at the side of the road with cameras and binoculars out. We asked what they were looking at since we didn’t see anything and were told a grizzly had just crossed a meadow but was out of view now.  Darn!  We also saw more elk and antelope…and we saw lots of bison again but we have so many photos of them we didn’t take anymore.  We laughed at people who were stopped at the road to take telephoto photos of one bison way on the other side of a meadow and wanted to tell them “Hey, head south over to the meadows near Old Faithful – there are HUGE herds with babies all over the roads down there!”  But, we didn’t.

Here are pictures from this trip: