We arrived in Yellowstone the evening of the 6th. We set up our tent and got settled in for the exploring we would do the next two days. This was a good first test for the new four seasons tent, 0 degree sleeping bags, and the new insulated mats. They all worked flawlessly. We had rain every night, the first night was a hail thunder storm. Little un-nevering when you are in a tent in a bunch of trees, but what are you going to do. We could not see the actual lightening, but surely saw the flashes and heard the thundering booms.

We took Rt 20 most of the way there, and the route was nice in scenery with a few sweepers and lots of elevation changes. I had been through Yellowstone three times before, but never really stopped. Our plan was to take trails and explore as much as possible. We had bear spray for the chance encounter with a bear.

Yellowstone has what they call the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone which features two large waterfalls call upper and lower falls. That was the focal point of our first full day, to explore that area. One of the trails we took was called "Uncle Tom's Trail" which basically went straight down almost 500 feet, mostly steel stairs. You got tire going down, and it was a burner coming back up. We did it twice, once this day, the second time early morning the next day. One thing I have to check when reviewing my photos is that there does not appear to be the number of photos saved that I took. This is evident with my panorama photos which appear to be missing sets. I am beginning to think I was changing camera settings faster then the camera was writing to the card. If so, then I have lost a lot of photos for panorama shots. The photos above are some of what I took that I have processed. Some are HDR. Others regular photos.

I did not get any wildlife photos. Just didn't see anything other then the buffalo which I have on video. So many of the shots are of the plenty full water falls. The videos are to show some of the beautiful scenery that Yellowstone has to offer.

Spending three days in any national park really isn't enough time to explore and get to know the places to go. With only two days we hit many of the same tourist overlooks as the millions of other visitors. We may plan another return for an extended time where we may get off the beaten path to explore more. Some of the trails were closed because of the Grizzly attack a few weeks back that killed one tourist.

My pet peeve of the tourist just stopping in the middle of the road still holds true for Yellowstone. We were stopped in traffic with a bunch of buffalo, and the Parks Police were trying to get the buffalo out of the roadway so traffic could move along. What happens is these people would stop and gawk at the buffalo instead of moving along. When they stop, more buffalo take the opportunity to enter the roadway again causing a delay. I guess it is to be expected there.

The buffalo were the only real wildlife we saw except for a couple of young elk in a field, and a bunch of elk in the park at Mammoth Springs.

Mammoth Springs is the North entrance and that is the way we went out to Glacier. This entrance has the arched entry that Roosevelt had built. Pretty impressive entry. The town is called Gardiner and it is an old west style town. We stopped for lunch before heading off to Glacier.