Wandering Southeast -- Chico & Yellowstone

Bison in their winter coats!

We head 300 or so miles southeast of Hamilton -- for the first time in a long time. But it's to stay at the regionally revered (and relatively cheap) Chico Hot Springs (http://www.chicohotsprings.com/) and to dip down into Yellowstone National Park (http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm) three separate times. We spy buffalo, in the photo above and several far below, many times. They are such beautiful and well-coated beasts!

One of the views from our room at Chico.

Paradise Valley, home to Chico and to the north entrance of the park, is nearly as pristine as the park itself. Ted Turner owns a good chunk of this valley, and has made public his plans to keep it in tact. Other TV and movie stars also are said to live and vacation here -- Tom Brokaw and Michael Keaton among them. Who am I leaving out?

We drive into the north entrance to Yellowstone at the town of Gardiner (here's a map from spring 2011 http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/upload/springmap2011.gif) and basically "do" the northern 1/3 to 1/2 of the park in our three days.

Bison bring traffic to a halt in the park on Day Two.

They stray to the left...

...and stop for a scratch...

..before straying to the right.

Finally, they bound off the road.

We see elk, too. They are most magnificent to me when they're running in a herd in some distant, still-wild meadow. 

A big-horn sheep is quite sassy, with a mid-day trot down the middle of the road.

But enough of the fauna. The landscape can be as stunning as it is different, from one road and one day to the next.

Artists' Paintpots is a site where hot mud takes on different colors - pale blues, deep oranges, white and mud brown are just a few that we see.

Roaring Mountain features dozens of fumaroles -- some of the hottest hydrothermal features in the park. Water turns to steam at the surface and deposits minerals across the ground. On this overcast day, the effect is one of a black-and-white photograph.

The now-extinct Soda Butte geyser near the mouth of the Lamar River in Yellowstone.

Subtle fall color, as seen in shrubs along a Yellowstone hill.

Trees look even more like winter here.

 

We stop at a wolf sighting and Alex later gets a glimpse of two members of a pack -- pin dot size, through a borrowed scope.  There is tourism related to wolves, whether ranchers and our county commissioners think so or not.

Finally we leave the park, but not before another big bison makes his presence known, solo style.

Bye Yellowstone! You are now in our "backyard," so see you next time around.