ONE THING CHECKED OFF MY BUCKET LIST

Bull Moose


Wayne & I at the Grand Tetons


Lower Falls on the Yellowstone River


Wayne & Clyde being "The Fruit & The Nut"


Clyde, Carol & I


Grizzly Bear


One of the Many Buffalo

I finally got to check something off of my imaginary bucket list last week. We took a trip with some friends to Yellowstone National Park. I think we saw 29 different animals, some more than once. We flew out on Saturday morning the 21st, rented a car in Salt Lake City Utah and drove to Jackson Hole Wyoming to spend the night. The next morning we drove through the The Grand Tetons. Those were some beautiful mountains, we stopped at a big lake at the foot of the mountains and walked around enjoying the beautiful scenery then headed out to Yellowstone. We tried timing our animal viewing times for early morning & late afternoon. We drove into West Yellowstone first, saw some elk and buffalo. The first animal we saw the next morning was wolves, but they were too far away to get any pictures from my camera. We went to several different "things to see while in Yellowstone" places, like waterfalls, lakes, amazing views...etc... but my least favorite things to see while there was the Geyser's. I hated them, they made me a little nervous and believe me, there were way too many of those in Yellowstone. Actually, there was one that was cool to see blow and that was Old Faithful. We stayed two nights in West Yellowstone, then drove to North Yellowstone and actually stayed in a really nice cabin near the river in Gardiner, Montana. The most exciting things I saw while there was 3 Moose grazing along a back road that we took. I think we took a gazillion pictures of them. Then later that day we were driving along when we came across a "wild life jam". This is where people will be jammed all over the road jumping out of their cars to get pictures of an animal, usually a bear, buffalo, moose or something cool like that. This time it happened to be a Grizzly Bear with a determined stride just past some brush near the road. Wayne, Clyde & I jumped out of the vehicle and tried to get pics, but it was too hard with him moving through the brush to get a good picture. Clyde & I chased her up the road for a long ways, while Wayne went back to the vehicle & Carol drove to pick us up.



I was pretty tired of chasing it, so we drove up the road quite a ways away from the ton of people that were still trying to get pics. We found a nice opening and got out hoping the Grizzly would still be heading towards us. I got next to a tree with my video camera while the other three got their cameras ready. Carol told us that the people down the road were heading out, so it must have move down further in the woods, when all of a sudden I saw it coming towards us. I told everyone "here it comes" , it was so exciting, the Grizzly got within 35 yards of us so we got some good pics & video. I was never scared. I also got within 6 ft or so of a huge Bull Elk and had a stare off with a Buffalo. He wanted to cross my path, but I wanted to go down it, so we just had a stand off. It was pretty funny, cause I could hear a lady up the path saying "she is getting too close" while Wayne decided to film the Buffalo charging me, I guess so he could have proof of what really happened....lol! One of the coolest things we saw was a friendship between a Coyote & a Badger. We were expecting a huge fight, but they were friends, something you would see in a movie. The Lower Falls Waterfall was the most awesome sight I saw, it was part of the Yellowstone River and ran below the Yellowstone Grand Canyon which was more beautiful to me than the Grand Canyon. I am so thankful that I finally got to go to Yellowstone, something I have wanted to do for a long time. While standing a looking a different places while there and at the Grand Tetons, I couldn't help but be in awe of what beautiful things our God created for us. Guess now I am going to have to figure out where to go to next......

Missing PeeWee!!