Yellowstone National Park - May 2025

 

Yellowstone is full of Rivers, Lakes and Waterfalls ...

... Mountains and Valleys ...

...and Thermal Activity.  This my 8th or 9th visit to Yellowstone, Marcia's 4th or 5th.  One can take pictures of the scenery.  Once you have seen Old Faithful shoot off a dozen times, you don't have as much enthusiasm to sit around and wait for it to go off again.  We both agree that the one thing that you can't get enough of is the wild animals.  So over the course of three different trips in the park this visit, we tried to get pictures of different animals.  Below is a pictorial of our visit.

 

BEAR

All the bears we saw were in the general area of where the turnoff to the Lamar Valley was.  Each time there were Park Rangers, once three of them, keeping the traffic moving, and keeping people inside their cars.  Rules are, you must be 100 yards away (or more) from the bears.  Looked like one of them was a Grizzly Bear (4th picture).

 

DEER

This is the only picture we got of any Deer, and I think there are four in the picture.  This was taken on the road to Lamar Valley, about 1-2 miles in from the Loop Road.  (If you have never been to Yellowstone, there are two loops which touch, forming a rough looking number "8", with five other roads connecting into the loops, two on the top loop of the "8" and three on the bottom loop of the "8".)  We "might" have seen deer three or four other times on our whole trip from Florida...what's up with that???

 

ELK  

The Elk we saw was in the Madison River Area.  You need to look close at the first Elk picture, there are three Elk in that picture, two are down in a small stream and you can barely make them out.  We did not see the herd of Elk that are typically found Mammoth Hot Springs area, but we did not go north of the Visitor Center, and they could have been up there.

 

PRONGHORN 

In the bottom picture there is a mother, and two newborns...but the mother is hovering over one of the newborns and you can't see it very well.  The other newborn is attempting to stand.  These Pronghorns were at the start of the Lamar Valley.

 

SANDHILL CRANE

I did not know that there are Sandhill Cranes in Yellowstone.  Our first sighting had the Cranes way out in the meadow...I did not get any good pictures...but later in the same area we found a few much closer.  The Cranes were the Norris area.

 

BUFFALO

  

 

Buffalo can be seen all over the park.  In May most of them are still in the "Herd" that is in Lamar Valley.  But you can also find them along the road, or out in groups of 2-5 Buffalo out in a meadow.  We saw some near Old Faithful, near Madison, near Mammoth ... but most of them were still in the Lamar Valley.  Give them another month or two and they will be clogging up the roadways, bringing traffic to a standstill.  They are a magnificent beast.

I have now been to Yellowstone in May, June, July, August and September.  Each month brings a new view of Yellowstone...as I am sure the views during the other months do too.  

We moved from West Yellowstone to the Bill Frome Memorial RV Park along the western side of Henrys Lake....$15 per night with no utilities.  It was a very peaceful place.  Today we moved to a park we found in 2020, the Juniper Campground near Idaho Falls.  We will be here through Sunday, then back to Salt Lake City, then head back to Sacramento.  

 

Bubbalo - Theodore Roosevelt National Park - North Unit

 

Hi Folks, Indy here again, I HAVE to tell you about what I saw today...it was a BUBBALO!

INDY!

Yes Dad.

I told you, it is a BUFFALO, not a BUBBALO.

But Dad, it poops as big as Bubba does, it LOOKS like Bubba, and frankly, it looks as stu...

INDY, don't talk about your big brother like that...Bubba is not stu...I mean Bubba is smart, he is just old and a bit slower than he use to be.   Now look, since you are going to act like this, I am taking over...

We got up a little after 7 am, and we were on the road by 7:45 having parked the HHR in the back parking lot of the restaurant near the RV park.  The drive up to the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park was uneventful except for the road construction being done just before and after the entrance...another bridge being replaced...this one over the Little Missouri River, a tributary of the Missouri River which is about 550 miles long.  As you get close to the park, you do see some of the rock formations like we saw yesterday.

Right after the bridge you turn left into the park...which you need to watch for very carefully with the construction because the sign and the left hand turn are together, and the sign informing you of the park entrance blends in with the construction stuff.

At this entrance during this time of year you have to enter the Visitor's Center to show your card...and MASKS are required...even though she looks at the card from 15-20 feet away and you exit.  But like any place that want masks, I am happy to oblige.  For those who don't, I just maintain my distance.

After we came upon the first batch of Bubbaloes, I mean Buffaloes (INDY, Why did you EVER put that into my mind?) we came upon another batch of Buffaloes.  (YES, we KNOW that in America we have BISON, not Buffalo...but why be such a stinker about it?)

After getting these pictures of the Buffaloes, Marcia turns to me and says, "Ok, let's go home!"  But we continued in pursuit of more horses.

We continued with our climb to Oxbow Overlook.  At one of the pullouts along the way, we stopped and I cooked some egg burritos with the last of Arny's wonderful tri-tip he cooked before we left, and our low-carb burritos.  YUM!  We take off and we are still 4-5 miles from Oxbow Overlook where the road ends and you turn around and head back to the front gate. 

Know that we left at 7:45, entered the park around 8:30, I could not understand why it was now 10:30 and we still had 4-5 miles to go to the top.  I asked Marcia if it was possible that we had been in the park for two hours already, and she said "Yes".  WOW, time sure flies when you're having fun!

For nearly 4 miles you drive along the top of a plateau, and can not see down into the canyons below except for an occasional glimpse here and there.

Finally you get to the overlook, but to see anything you have to walk out on this rough pathway, so Marcia stayed in the motorhome.  I found the view a bit anticlimactic, but that is because one naturally compares it to other views they have seen, such as the Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, and numerous other views which just blow you away.  Yes, this was nice...but not a top five view, maybe not a top ten view.

We see more, or the same buffaloes that we saw when we entered the park back at 8:30.  Unfortunately we did not see any more horses, nor any of the Big Horn Sheep.  It is now close to noon.  Wow, time does really fly ...

I take a right headed back to the RV Park 45 miles away through the construction...and I see this sign..."Entering Mountain Standard Time".  WHAT?  When did we leave MST?  Then my phone changes time, the GPS changes time...we got our missing hour back.  YES, we were having fun...but not enough to account for a missing hour.  Who would have known that the Little Missouri River in this area was the boundary for the difference between Central and Mountain Time Zones...so in the park, the South Unit is on Mountain Time, the North Unit is on Central Time.  It also means that in that construction zone, part of the crew is working on Mountain Time, the other part on Central Time.  I can just see a guy in Mountain Time asking his boss what time lunch is.  "Noon" the guy says.  It is only 11:00, so he goes to the other end of the work zone, where it is noon, and has his lunch.  Very confusing situation.

So we got back to the HHR, loaded onto the motorhome, at started down I-94 east.  I took these two pictures about 100 miles apart...yes, not much of a difference, and that sums up the trip to Wolff's Grill & Bar, Dawson, North Dakota where they have a Passport America RV Park behind the Grill/Bar.  

There are around twenty spots, and there is only one RV in the park other than us, and I think he/she might work in the Restaurant/Bar.  For $15 it is a deal.