Yellowstone Day 2

I've been on Animal Watch the whole time Colin's been driving, so again, it's been hard to write. Now I know why people talk about the animals at Yellowstone so much. Yesterday we saw three male elk grazing on a hill. They looked so top-heavy with those huge antlers that I was amazed by their neck strength every time they picked their heads up. I used my digital point-and-shoot camera because the zoom is much better than on my phone, so unfortunately I can't share the pictures with you, although Colin did manage to get this photo of me stalking the elk:

 A little farther down the same mountain, we saw a bunch of bighorn sheep. Disclaimer: I'm doing my best to properly name these animals, with the help of Colin and the handy informative Yellowstone brochure we received upon our entry, but I could be getting some or all of them wrong. I'm pretty sure I got the bighorn sheep right, though, because they were wooly and had big horns. Duh.

We've seen a good amount of bison and/or buffalo (I don't know what's the difference). This morning we saw four of them grazing (and one pooping) really close to the road. We saw two others a few hours later.

And yesterday evening we saw a whole herd of them in a field--some grazing, some roaming, and some just lying there. That was a pretty breathtaking sight: there they were, in their natural wild state, giving you the sense that you were intruding just by observing.

I'm also thrilled to announce that my Yellowstone trip is complete because...we saw a bear! Actually, we saw three bears--what looked like a mama black bear and two lighter colored babies. I texted my dad to ask if black bears could have sandy brown young or if I was looking at a very dark brown bear, and his reply was, "Whoa. I don't know, but I do know you don't want to be near any mama bear and her cubs." I assured him that the bears were down in the valley and I was watching them from a very safe distance.

I should mention that none of these animal sightings were due to any success on my part of Animal Watch duty. With the exception of the one lone oversized deer-like animal we saw near the road at Grand Teton, all the others had crowds gathered to watch them with their cameras out, which were pretty hard to miss when we were driving by.