Yellowstone Getaway: Day 3, aka Bear Day

Day 3 was AWESOME. Although we didn't get pictures of even half, we saw a total of EIGHT bears that day.

This was Saturday, so we decided to sleep in. We had the noisiest upstairs neighbors, so it didn't really happen, but we made an attempt. I'm pretty sure it was a taste of what Sam & Jess have to live with since our house is old and squeaky, and we felt SOOO BAD when we realized this. At least they got a couple days of quiet, right? Anyways, we got up and ready, then we decided to go grab some McDonald's for breakfast because Josh was craving it. I tried a bite of his McGriddle. Mmmm. Then we stopped at Subway to grab a foot long for our lunch later that day. The plan was to head up to Mammoth, and luckily we'd already seen some of the stops along the way from Thursday, so we were able to waste our time on the way up there admiring the wild life! And boy was there plenty!

I'm a sucker for waterfalls

A guy watched me stick my hand out to do a self portrait of us and offered to take it for us if we would do it for him. Fair enough. :)

We found it humorous that the snow wasn't on the bottoms of the trees from all the cars blowing by.

I think this one is called Whale's Mouth. It was pretty, and Josh did an impressive job getting the tree reflections.

This one bubbles like that constantly.

This reminded me of something you would see in a ship wreck. Then Josh made some comment about Pirates from the night before. :)

 Now for some bears! There were 2 together, and one ran back up the mountain before Josh was able to get a picture of it. We literally played Chinese fire drill in the middle of the road. Josh jumped out, grabbed his camera from the back, and I ran around to the driver's side to slowly follow traffic. You always know when there's a bear. Its a joke getting past all the cars. Not that you're trying... ;)

Bear #3 (as described above) was full of action. He was all over the place.

He's getting ready to take off again.

Ignore my crappy camera skills, but watch him run past a bunch of cars. Shortly after I lose him in view Josh watched him cross the street on the other side. We were so excited to have seen this!

 Then we drive down the road JUST PAST all the traffic and happen upon more for bear #4!

He was right there in a meadow, so easy to get lots of shots of him. He ended up digging in some dirt a little closer to the road.

I think the red grass is cool looking. I think Josh took this at Sheepeater's Cliff where we stopped for lunch.

 We finished making our way up to Mammoth and started walking around the terraces there. Remember I'm still plenty sore from Day 2.

Doesn't do much anymore. Lol

The red color is where it still has water flowing over it.

Another stream.

Check out that hill we just climbed up! I thought I was going to die...and it wasn't even the end, there were still a bunch of stairs!

Apparently Josh thought it would be funny to take a picture of me panting.

Mr. Camera, himself.

Another waterfall. I didn't even see this until the way back out of Mammoth. We were in a canyon that had quite the drop-off on the side. Few things give me a fear of heights like those. I literally sat in the car and closed my eyes while Josh got out to take this picture.

We went up to Gardiner, just past the North Entrance to get a picture by the sign and so Josh could show me the big stone arch entrance.

Then we went back into Mammoth and did yet again more shopping and potty breaks.

On the way back down to the West Entrance we saw some traffic at a pull off, so we decided to see what it was. Josh got out and asked around. It was un-pictured bears #5-7, a mom and 2 cubs. Josh said they were 3 black spots in his zoom lens, and someone with a MUCH BIGGER one let him look and he said it still would be a long shot. So we continued on. Around the same area as in the morning, we saw un-pictured bear #8. He was hard to see through trees, and we figured we had quite a few bear pictures. Then we went just a little further and there was bear #9. He was in a great spot and again traffic was pretty backed up, so I was able to use Josh's camera and get a few great pics of a very black bear.

Bear #9 wandering

Close-up. Check out that schnoz.

 Wow! 9 bears!!! 8 in one day! We call that a successful trip to Yellowstone! We were a bit bummed we never did see a moose, though.
We continued back and made a stop to see some pond or something off to the side of the road.

Another tourist bird

He flies up onto the hill...

 We walk down the sidewalk a ways...

...then turn around and find him on a perch!

Pond or other thing we stopped off to see. Haha

 Yes, we stopped to take MORE pictures of the bison. But I had a good reason! There were a couple fighting, but they had stopped by the time we were out of the car and had the camera ready.

Lots of young here. There were quite a few more adults on the other side of the river.

One of them crossing. Look how deep!

 We finally made it back to town and did just a bit of shopping. We were looking for a jacket for Josh, but didn't find he was looking for, so we got him an awesome t-shirt instead. Then we went to a local pizza/sandwich/bar place for dinner. We decided by this point we definitely needed to relax our leg muscles, so we went hot tubbing, and Josh had a few amusing runs down the big slide at the pool as well. We were hoping it would stay clear so we could go back into the park to see some stars, but by the time it started getting dark enough to think about going it was cloudy again, so we decided to go to bed early.