Bismarck ND to Jackson WY. 715 miles<\/p>\n
This was Yellowstone day, or rather 5 hours through Yellowstone. This was also a personal record, but not one I want to ever break. Five days is much better, and I wouldn’t mind trying for five weeks. I told myself that I would check with Canyon Village in the park and if they had a room, I would spend the night and make up the miles later in the trip, but as luck would have it, the last available room was taken just minutes before I got there.<\/p>\n
Still, Yellowstone is a place where a lot can happen in just a few hours. It started before I reached the park, just on the other side of Beartooth Pass. There was a huge expanse of freshly burned forest. The smell of smoke was still strong. This was just one of the many burns I had already seen this trip.<\/p>\n
Up on the pass, it started to snow, and quite heavily, at that. I passed a snowplow coming up the other direction to handle the little drifts that were starting to gather on the road. I felt sorry for the motorcyclists who were stopped at a viewpoint to bundle up. Several cars turned back from the pass, although it was still quite passable.<\/p>\n
The first animal I spotted in the park was a deer, but it was far from the last. In Lamar Valley, I spotted a herd of Buffalo off in the distance, and just past Tower Junction, the road was clogged by the many vehicles that had stopped to observe a black bear and her two cubs, just twenty feet or so from the road. I got some great video.<\/p>\n
However, Yellowstone was not immune to the dry spell, and the lakes and rivers were all down several feet. Some of the watering holes I had seen in years past were dried out.<\/p>\n
After passing through Canyon Village and stocking up on supplies, I walked over to the Upper Falls, and was scolded by a squirrel.<\/p>\n
Down by Fishing Bridge, I stopped to marvel at the trout that no one is allowed to fish and then on down by Lake Yellowstone. By then it was getting rather cold, and I was NOT going to close up the Jeep in Yellowstone! I had not brought a coat this trip, but two shirts, a sweater, a wool pullover and a windbreaker, together with the heater running full blast at least made it tolerable.<\/p>\n
I saw the steam from the geysers, but this trip, they were going to be ignored. After several trips, it is the animals that draw me there, time and again.<\/p>\n
And my observations weren’t done yet. While trying to make it to Grand Teton before I lost all my light, I saw a male and female elk near the road, and then a few miles farther on, I saw a pair of bull moose grazing in the distance. Of course, the video camera was ready at hand.<\/p>\n
Finally, I reached Lake Jackson, and although the sun had set, there was still quite enough light to take pictures of the Tetons, and the mists rising in their valleys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bismarck ND to Jackson WY. 715 miles This was Yellowstone day, or rather 5 hours through Yellowstone. This was also a personal record, but not one I want to ever break. Five days is much better, and I wouldn’t mind trying for five weeks. I told myself that I would check with Canyon Village in… Continue reading Worldcon Chicago Wednesday #2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[518,523,56,261,90],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-Uw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3505,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504\/revisions\/3505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}