These are really beautiful pictures, I like the buffalo, deers, I think there was a nutcracker bird wasn't it? I believe there was some moose too but it's hard to tell if it's a deer or a moose. Black bears, yikes!! I'll be so frighten.
Did you see any wolves or elk or mountain lions?
Where did you stay at? Did you rent out a cabin or did you just camped out?
Thanks for sharing these pictures with us.
The buffalo are really bison {no idea what the difference is}
I have no clue what kind of bird that was
I could hear wolves but I did not see them
There was elk but no mountain lions
My last vacation before this one I discovered that my tent camping
days are over so I was in a hotel.
There are 5 different entrances to Yellowstone the one I was closet to
was west Yellowstone. I stayed in Island park Idaho 20 miles from Yellowstone
park.
In those 20 miles i started in Idaho went thru Montana and ended up in
Wyoming
When I first planned my trip I read the best time to go was mid September to
late October. I picked the first week in October because it was right in the
middle.
About a week before I was to leave I saw it might snow up there. I figured no
big deal first snow of the year won't be bad
I have lived in Arizona my whole life and while I have done some traveling and
been in the snow I have never driven in snow {yes we have snow in Arizona}
Saturday night I drove up to Flagstaff, Az. Sunday I drove thru the entire
State of Utah and into Pocatello, Idaho. I stayed the night there and in
the morning in was snowing {but not bad}
The locals said it had not snowed that early in a long time. I then drove up to
my hotel in Island Park, Idaho. Got myself checked in and drove to
Yellowstone.
They had some key roads in the park closed and if I had know that I would
have planned my hotel stay a lot better. I drove to Old Faithful but was
disappointed and the height it shot up but that was OK because everything
else was gorgeous.
When I woke up my 2nd day in was 15 degrees and my car windows
were covered in ice. I borrowed an Ice scraper then at Yellowstone I
stopped and got some information from a park ranger. He told me because
a key road that was closed I should look at everything up to the
north entrance and stay the night there {A different part of Montana}
I should have went back to my hotel and got some stuff first but I said
the hell with it and did what he suggested.
Wow, The drive to the north entrance was spectacular. Weather was great
{I love cold weather} I stopped at all the places on the map and a few
that weren't. I loved my hotel at the north entrance and loved
Montana because there is no sales tax.
The 3rd day I woke up and it was 40 degrees. When I got to Yellowstone
they told me one of the 2 closed roads was open but snow was in
the forecast so they might close it. Sure enough it was snowing off and on
and by the time I got there they had it closed. They also and a number of
hiking trails closed but a lot of people were ignoring the signs.
I turned around at the road closed sign, went about 1/2 a mile and saw
2 cars parked on the side of the road where the wasn't really room to park.
The drivers of those cars were frantically running back and forth taking pictures.
I put down the passenger side widow and tried to see what they were
taking pics of, sure enough it was a mama bear and 2 cubs. I parked my car
as fast as I could, ran with my camera and took as many pics as I could
before they wandered off. It was snowing pretty good or the pictures would
have come out better.
I started back to the hotel but I had one more stop. The place I finished at
was one the other end of the other closed road. If it hadn't been closed it
have taken me about 50 minutes to get back to my hotel but instead I had
go all the way around and it just started snowing heavy.
Within 15 minutes I could only see about 3 feet past the hood of my vehicle.
I could only drive 15 to 20 miles an hour. The only way I could tell if the road
turned was by looking at my gps. I must have had 6 or 7 cars behind me and
no matter how slow I went nobody would pass me. {I really did not want to
be in front}
This went on for a very long time, finally someone passed me and I speed up
because following tail lights was a lot better then looking at a gps. We
still had a long drive and finally got to the turnoff for the south
entrance, now all we have to do was get the the west entrance and
we would be home free
In the distance I could see police lights, they made us stop because the road
was unsafe. the only thing we could do was go out the south entrance thru
Grand Teton National Park and into Jackson Wyoming. Before we turned
around I got out of the car and talked to the people in the lead car. I told
them how much I appreciated them passing me so I could follow their tail
lights.
The couple was from Delaware and the guy had a lot of snow driving
experience. The storm got worse. Visibility was very bad and to make
matters worse I could only see out of a 2 inch space on my windshield
because the snow and mixed with rain and falling leaves making my wipers
just about useless.
I flashed my lights to get the couple to stop so I could clean off my
windshield. We still had a long way to go but finally made to to Jackson.
The guy told me he had never driven thru a storm like that, and after I told
them it was my first time driving in snow and I didn't have snow tiers they
couldn't believe it. The entire drive took over 6 hours.
When I woke up the next day I called and Yellowstone was still closed.
The only way I could get home was to drive thru Teton pass. It has 10%
grades and a flashing signs said no trailers because of black ice. I made
it and then drove thru eastern Idaho where the grow potatoes.
This part was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on and if
I hadn't been so far behind schedule I would have stopped and taken pictures.
Driving in that storm was easily one of the top 5 scariest moments of my life
but my trip over all was the best vacation I ever had.
