Yellowstone part II

Today in Billings, Montana, we are back in shorts and the warmth and sunshine are welcome.  Great to wash the thermals and put them away, but for how long this time?

Getting back to Yellowstone and the wildlife spotting, here is a group of elk checking out a campsite not far from ours.

We spotted some coyotes near the river looking for something,

and then saw this fox near the road after a small critter no doubt.

It is early calving season for the bison and we saw only a handful of calves.  Check out this photo carefully, it is a little scary (for the bison) to see the fox or coyote just in the upper left corner, not very far from that calf.  Didn't notice the fox until we were going through the photos.

We were very lucky to see some wolves too.  This fellow was busy digging something up near the road.

 These guys were on some sort of mission in the snow.  They marched right past us in the RV.

We even managed to spot a moose and her calf up in the forest one day.  Surprise, what good luck!

What we did not see, was a bear.  Are they all still hibernating?  We heeded the warnings but spent a lot of time looking in the areas that are supposed to have a lot of bears.

 You might ask, what is bear spray?  We wondered if it would have a similar effect, on a bear, as wasp spray.  The bear spray is over $30.00 a can and the wasp spray is about $3.00, but who is willing to do this experiment?  Really.

...and so, we were armed with bear spray.

We could have easily spent more than four days in this park.  The scenery was stunning, no matter what weather conditions we encountered.

 The thermal activity in so many areas of the park is renowned.  There are bubbling hot springs all over.

 How hot are they?  Chris just had to touch the springwater.

 One day we all went to see Old Faithful, which following an earthquake, isn't quite so faithful anymore but this day it was right on time.

Finally, it was time to leave.  One last look at the snow, and another interesting road sharing experience, and then we headed to the Roosevelt Gate.